In Vivo klotho Gene Transfer Ameliorates Angiotensin II-Induced Renal Damage -- Mitani et al. 39 (4): 838 -- Hypertension

In Vivo klotho Gene Transfer Ameliorates Angiotensin II-Induced Renal Damage -- Mitani et al. 39 (4): 838 -- Hypertension

Lemieux

Lemieux

digitalMass at Boston.com

digitalMass at Boston.com Mitch Kapor uses his personal fortune to create free software he says will outdo Microsoft Outlook

By Chris Gaither, Globe Staff, 12/20/2002

DMCA comments published

DMCA comments published The DMCA, one might recall, is that draconian law purchased by the major media conglomerates to extend their monopolies on music and movies right into your personal life, a step on the path to universal pay-per-use.

It's the law Russian programmer Dimitri Sklyarov was arrested for having allegedly broken -- even though he wrote his program in Russia, where it was perfectly legal. His employer, Elcomsoft, was recently tried instead under the criminal provisions of the DMCA and... they were acquitted.

A drop of ocean water tells a story About ten thousand bacterioplankton of the type SAR 11 are found in every drop of seawater. And yet, as explained in the article, which gives the first accurate quantitative assessment of SAR 11, scientists are only beginning to understand what these organisms do.

CRWS Jet Stream Map Menu

CRWS Jet Stream Map Menu

The Register

The Register Prices of printer cartridges look set to drop thanks to a new EU law that will ban printer firms from forcing consumers to buy their own-brand refills.
The European Parliament voted unanimously on Wednesday in favour of a new EU "electroscrap" recycling law, which includes a ruling directing manufacturers of printers to no longer incorporate chips into their own-brand ink refill cartridges. These chips prevent cartridges produced by other manufacturers from being used in many printers.

In addition, proponents of the measure say the chips prevent them from being refilled -- a feature on many cartridges made by printer manufacturers.

News

News Teams of researchers from around the world have shown that tiny strands of RNA possess incredible powers of control over genes by shutting them off like a light switch, effectively rendering them impotent by interference. Small strands of RNA can even chop into the DNA of the genes directly to rearrange large pieces of the chromosomes. "Remarkably, in some species, truncated RNA molecules literally shape genomes, carving out chunks to keep and discarding others," Science says. "There are even hints that certain small RNAs might help chart a cell's destiny by directing genes to turn on or off during development, which could have profound implications for coaxing cells to form one type of tissue or another."

160 mm for a Hub

Dead link seems to be about hubs for tandem bicyle.
160 mm for a Hub

Scott Report

Scott Report

The CAPTCHA Project.

The CAPTCHA Project.

ABCNEWS.com : Attempt to Gain Tech Edge Against Terrorists

CD MAP Settlement

CD MAP Settlement

BeOS Max @ Crux

BeOS Max @ Crux

Tipping with Usability : opinion : uidesign.net

Tipping with Usability : opinion : uidesign.net

American Scientist - Computing Science

American Scientist - Computing Science

In my hand I hold a metal box, festooned with labels, serial numbers, bar codes and tamperproof seals. Inside the box is everything I have written over the past 10 years—articles, a book, memos, notes, programs, letters, e-mail, shopping lists. And there’s still plenty of room left for everything I might hope to write in the next 10 years. For an author, it’s a little humbling to see so much of a life’s work encompassed in a tin box just big enough for a couple dozen pencils.

The metal box, of course, is a disk drive. And it’s not even the latest model. This one is a decade old and has a capacity of 120 megabytes, roughly equivalent to 120 million characters of unformatted text. The new disk that will replace it looks much the same—just a little slimmer and sleeker—but it holds a thousand times as much: 120 gigabytes, or 1.2 x 1011 characters of text. That’s room enough not only for everything I’ve ever written but also for everything I’ve ever read. Here in the palm of one hand is space for a whole intellectual universe—all the words that enter a human mind in a lifetime of reading.

Ars Technica: The PC enthusiast's resource

Ars Technica: The PC enthusiast's resource In a rather interesting development in the world of distributed computing, Gateway has moved into a market segment traditionally dominated by the likes of IBM and Sun Microsystems. Gateway is offering their own version of grid computing called Processing on Demand, utilizing the combined processing power of their nearly 8,000 PCs scattered throughout their 272 Gateway Country stores. Capable of 14 TFLOPs, the combined power of their PCs outranks the world's most powerful supercomputer as ranked by top500.org.

Charging fifteen cents per individual CPU hour for as much CPU power that is needed, Gateway's solution will enable many corporations to more cost-effectively do large computations. Rather than purchasing large quantities of hardware that quickly become outdated

BePage at www.b500.com

BePage at www.b500.com

yellowTAB - New Generation BeOS Solutions :: History

yellowTAB - New Generation BeOS Solutions :: History

Welcome to TotallyBe

Welcome to TotallyBe

Extreme Programming: A Gentle Introduction.

Extreme Programming: A Gentle Introduction.

OpenBeOS Project

OpenBeOS Project

My first glimpse of BeOS came in college (no surprise). After the death of the Amiga, I sketched out an operating system design and took classes to learn how to implement it. In one of those classes, I met Scott. I showed him my sketches (object hierarchies) and he told me to look at the BeBook. I was shocked - it was 95% the same as what I had sketched out! When I saw the BeBox (Scott had one), I was immediately taken with it. I started saving money to buy one. Scott went on vacation and I borrowed his for a couple of weeks. It was pure heaven! Right around the time that I had the money to buy the BeBox, the Mac port came out. I decided to put the money toward a Power Computing Mac Clone. Right around the time that I had the money for the Power machine that I was looking at, Steve Jobs shut down the clone companies. So I sat tight.

OpenBeOS Project - Displaying Newsletter

OpenBeOS Project - Displaying Newsletter For those of you who may not be so "enlightened" as to the purpose and concept of .Net, let me attempt to explain from a high-level perspective. The concept, at least as far as I have seen, is that web pages can be authored using an object hierarchy. This object hierarchy uses JavaScript as its basis for client-side interactions. You can derive from a standard object and build a new object which other .Net programmers can use. These objects can have two different types of interactions - server-side and client-side. Client-side interactions are typical JavaScript callbacks (mouse over, etc). Server-side interactions are what we used to call "Submits" - so named after the concept that the end user would fill in some data on a web form and press the submit button. The page's information, including object states is sent back to the web server where it is processed.

The clever part of this, on the business side of things is that, of course, you need a web server. And guess who makes the only web server that handles .Net objects? Yes, surprise, it is IIS. Microsoft sells updates to Visual Studio to developers, and more web server licenses.

The clever side of this on the technical end of things is that developers are being pressed to make everything a "web application". Much of this perspective relates to the poor way that Windows (even the vaunted XP) deals with the installation of software. You have to be an administrator to install a good deal of software. Since IT staff can't/shouldn't/won't give that right to everyone, IT staff has to install all of the software, which makes every upgrade that a company goes through costly (overtime, etc). Compare this to installing the software once, on the web server, and letting everyone access it - no licensing issues, no dll misery - just apps. Reminds me of my mainframe days.

Ars Technica: The PC enthusiast's resource

Ars Technica: The PC enthusiast's resource Posted 12/4/2002 - 10:30PM, by zAmboni
In news that rivals the completion of the Human Genome Project, researchers have revealed the first high quality public sequence of the mouse genome. Some researchers believe the mouse genome is more exciting than the human genome. Why? Mainly because libraries full of research have been conducted with mice, and mice are currently being used to study human diseases and basic biology. Needless to say, it is a bit tougher to do the same experimentation on humans.

Early analyses confirm preliminary estimates on the similarity between the mouse and human genomes. Ninety-nine percent of human DNA matches that of mice, and the two genomes both contain an estimated 30,000 genes. Only 300 of the mice genes have no counterpart in the human genome and vice versa.

Probably the most interesting finding, to me at least, is that many non-coding regions of DNA (what many news outlets like to erroneously call "junk DNA"), are conserved between humans and mice. I personally think the non-coding regions are very important in gene regulation, and contain the information on what makes mice, mice and men, men. The journal Nature has put together information on the arrival of the mouse genome here.

CRN: Daily Archives

CRN: Daily Archives By Paula Rooney, CRN
Boston
5:17 PM EST Tues., Dec. 03, 2002

Red Hat Chairman and CEO Matthew Szulik said Microsoft's legal efforts to challenge open source by employing patent infringement law represent a big threat.

"It's a credible threat, no doubt about it," said Szulik, a native son of Massachusetts who returned to deliver the keynote at Enterprise Linux Forum here. "We see the threat of costs of litigation could be harmful, cause a disenfranchisement of the global collaborative [development] community and disrupt the speed of innovation. Yes, I think it's quite credible."

So You Wanna Create Your Own x86 Operating System? LG #85

So You Wanna Create Your Own x86 Operating System? LG #85

Hezbollah calls for global attacks -- The Washington Times

Hezbollah calls for global attacks -- The Washington Times Two recent speeches by the Lebanon-based Hezbollah leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, have raised the specter of attacks outside the region by a powerful and well-organized military force

Herpes vaccine has promise for stemming spread -- The Washington Times

Herpes vaccine has promise for stemming spread -- The Washington Times

NASA nanometer breakthrough uses hot pond protein

NASA nanometer breakthrough uses hot pond protein
NASA SCIENTISTS say they have invented a breakthrough biological method to make ultra-small structures that could be used to produce electronics 10 to 100 times smaller than today’s components.

The scientists apparently use modified proteins from 'extremophile' microbes to grow mesh-like structures so small that an electron microscope is needed to see them. These naturally-occurring microbes live in near-boiling, acidic hot springs, according to an article in on-line version of the journal Nature Materials.

One of the scientists, Andrew McMillan, revealed: "We took a gene from a single-celled organism, Sulfolobus shibatae, which lives in near-boiling acid mud, and changed the gene to add instructions that describe how to make a protein that sticks to gold or semiconductors.

"What is novel in our work," he added, "is that we designed this protein so that when it self-assembles into a two-dimensional lattice or template, it also is able to capture metal and semiconductor particles at specific locations on the template surface."

Ars Technica: Smaller electronics from...bacteria???

Ars Technica: Smaller electronics from...bacteria???

Smaller electronics from...bacteria???

Posted 11/26/2002 - 5:29PM, by zAmboni
Problems may develop as semiconductors are shrunk to smaller and smaller processes, Nvidia can attest to that. New techniques and methods need to be developed in the sub-micron world and researchers at NASA Ames Research Center have elicited help from "extremophile" bacteria in building nanoscale structures. Why start from scratch in creating ordered structures when nature has already done so...packaged in tiny self-replicating factories?

In an online version of Nature Materials, researchers in the Ames labs outlined a technique for creating nanometer scale quantum dot arrays using a protein from the bacteria Sulfolobus shibatae. They isolated heat shock protein (HSP60) from the bacteria and engineered it to bind quantum dots. The protein self assembles into a ringed structure which forms an ordered lattice when crystallized. Since it is derived from an extremophile bacteria, the protein is stable to extreme temperatures and pH conditions.

"We apply the crystals to a substrate such as a silicon wafer, and we add a gold or semiconductor slurry," said McMillan. "The tiny particles of gold or semiconductor (cadmium selenide/zinc sulfide) stick to the lattices." According to McMillan, the minute pieces that adhere to the protein lattice are ‘quantum dots’ that are about one to 10 nanometers across. Today’s standard computer chips have features that are roughly 130 nanometers apart.

The researchers hope to use these materials for use in memory, logic and sensor chips. I'm sure Silicon Valley will find some use for it. It may be strange seeing bacteria brewing vats at TMSC fabs though.

Secure DNS service forgets to renew own domain name

Secure DNS service forgets to renew own domain name Secure DNS service forgets to renew own domain name

Oops... these things happen, we shouldn't smirk

By Adamson Rust: Tuesday 26 November 2002, 18:47

THE TZOLKIN Corporation – which claims the accolade of being the most reliable dynamic DNS service out there, suffered a SNAFU earlier today.

It apparently forgot to renew its domain name. That caused a huge shuffling about because users noticed that their client software wasn't connecting too well first thing this morning, across the second biggest pond on the planet.

But Tzolkin reacted swiftly and told thousands of users that service would be restored by 16:00 Eastern Standard Time.

In the meantime, users were advised to smurf across to http://208.220.171.17, while the propagation has err... propagated and in some regions of the globe, normal service is resumed at http://www.tzo.com.

It can happen to all of us, if we forget to renew chipzilla.com, beerandspirits.com, or whatever, we guess... µ

Ars Technica: The PC enthusiast's resource

Ars Technica: The PC enthusiast's resource Professor Louis Bloomfield made news last year when he unleashed a search code to detect plagiarism in his Physics 105 class at the University of Virginia. Bloomfield originally wrote his search program because he believed the internet provided the students opportunity to download and share information which could be used for term papers. His search resulted in 158 students suspected of plagiarism, yet only 59 were eventually charged with violating U. Va.'s strict honor code. Needless to say, this seriously taxed the Honors Committee which normally handles about 60-80 cases per year, but they eventually weeded through all of the cases.

Nigerian state slaps

Nigerian state slaps "death sentence" on Miss World reporter The government of a mainly Muslim state in northern Nigeria called for believers to kill a woman journalist who wrote an article on the Miss World pageant which was seen as insulting to the Prophet Mohammed.

Zamfara State's information commissioner, Umar Dangaladima, told AFP that the state government endorsed a "fatwa" -- an Islamic religious decree -- calling for the death of fashion writer Isioma Daniel, whose report triggered bloody riots.

There is no danger that the decree will be carried out -- Daniel lives far from Zamfara in Lagos and is said to have fled Nigeria -- but the statement marks another dispute between the leaders of the Muslim north and Nigeria's secular government.

Information Minister Jerry Gana, who acts as a spokesman for Nigeria's secular government, dismissed the decree as both "null and void" and unconstitutional and vowed it would not be enforced.

"The federal government under the laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria will not allow such an order in any part of the federal republic," he told AFP.

Last week more than 220 people died in the northern city of Kaduna in rioting, which has been blamed on the report, and the Miss World organisation was been forced to abandon plans to stage the spectacle in Nigeria.

Dangaladima told AFP: "The state government did not on its own pass the fatwa. It's a fact that Islam prescribes the death penalty on anybody, no matter his faith, who insults the Prophet.

Blogger Pro

Blogger Pro

When the human genome was first sequenced in June 2000, there were two pretty big surprises. The first was that humans have only about 30,000-40,000 identifiable genes, not the 100,000 or more many researchers were expecting. The lower -- and more humbling -- number means humans have just one-third more genes than a common species of worm.
The second stunner was how much human genetic material -- more than 90 percent -- is made up of what scientists were calling "junk DNA." The term was coined to describe similar but not completely identical repetitive sequences of nucleotides (the same substances that make genes), which appeared to have no function or purpose. The main theory at the time was that these apparently non-working sections of DNA were just evolutionary leftovers, much like our earlobes.
But if biophysicist Andras Pellionisz is correct, genetic science may be on the verge of yielding its third -- and by far biggest -- surprise.
In addition to possessing an honorary doctorate in physics, Pellionisz is the holder of Ph.D.'s in computer sciences and experimental biology from the prestigious Budapest Technical University and the Hungarian National Academy of Sciences respectively -- institutions that together have produced nearly a dozen Nobel Prize winners over the years.
In a provisional patent application filed July 31, Pellionisz claims to have unlocked a key to the hidden role junk DNA plays in growth -- and in life itself.

Nvidia's Crush chipset for the Athlon 64 will be a single chip NVIDIA SHOWED OFF its Crush K8 chipset for the AMD Athlon 64 to selected customers at the 2002 Comdex show, Digitimes reports.
And the chipset will be a single chip configuration, with the AGP controller interface integrated into the south bridge chip, the wire reports. Nvidia’s senior director of platform product management Drew Henry, said that Nvidia decided to include the AGP controller interface in the south bridge to enable mobo makers to design boards for the chip more easily using Crush. He said that, with AMD incorporating the north bridge-based memory controller into its upcoming processors, the role of the north bridge chip would become rather limited, the wire reports.

Dell and Microsoft share your data DELL AND MICROSOFT are to share information they have gathered on their customers in order to more closely target their marketing efforts in Japan, we learn from an article in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun.
According to the piece, Dell has some "cursory" information on about 100,000 small and midsize companies on its books in the region. Microsoft it seems, has more detailed information on around 20,000 customers. The pair are to share the information in an attempt to push more servers running Windows 2000 Server, through Dell's doors.

An unexpected discovery working with LEDs may help in making more efficient, low cost solar cells. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs were working with a new generation of wide-band gap LEDs which shine blue instead of the more traditional red when they ran across something strange. They were trying to get LEDs to work with indium nitride, but they couldn't get them to shine at the published band gap of 2 eV. After some further research they found the band gap was actually much lower, 0.7 eV to be exact. Because of this discovery, indium nitride nicely fills a gap which could allow for a full spectrum solar cell and allow for a theoretical 50% maximum efficiency in a two layer cell. Currently, the most efficient two layer solar cell is 30%.
Indium gallium nitride's advantages are many. It has tremendous heat capacity and, like other group III nitrides, is extremely resist to radiation. These properties are ideal for the solar arrays that power communications satellites and other spacecraft. But what about cost?
"If it works, the cost should be on the same order of magnitude as traffic lights," Walukiewicz says. "Maybe less." Solar cells so efficient and so relatively cheap could revolutionize the use of solar power not just in space but on Earth.
There are some problems that need to be overcome since indium gallium nitride crystals are "riddled with defects." But research in LEDs has shown the material is quite defect-tolerant, and the group hopes2

New Scientist A team led by Peter Savolainen at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm analysed samples of mitochondrial DNA from dogs in Asia, Africa, Europe and arctic America.
The analysis showed that modern dogs fall into five distinct genetic groups, with three of the groups accounting for more than 95 per cent of the dogs sampled. Each group is thought to be descended from a single female wolf.
But these groups do not correspond in any way to modern dog breeds, which were developed over the past 500 years. "You see the same sequence in the poodle and the German shepherd," Savolainen told New Scientist.
The greatest differences in the DNA sequences were in samples from east Asia, indicating that dogs originated in this region.

ScienceDaily News Release: Photosynthesis Analysis Shows Work Of Ancient Genetic Engineering The analysis revealed clear evidence that photosynthesis did not evolve through a linear path of steady change and growing complexity but through a merging of evolutionary lines that brought together independently evolving chemical systems -- the swapping of blocks of genetic material among bacterial species known as horizontal gene transfer.
"We found that the photosynthesis-related genes in these organisms have not had all the same pathway of evolution. It's clear evidence for horizontal gene transfer," said Blankenship.

IOL: Jet with warpable wings begins flight tests The F/A-18A with warping wings began test flights this month. The experiments could lead to aircraft equipped with wings that bend and shape themselves to manoeuvre in flight, rather than using flaps, slats and ailerons that do the job on today’s planes

Popular Mechanics - Technology Kodak Is First With A 14-MP Digital SLR

Space Elevator Upstarts Settle Down To Business Constructing a vertical railroad stretching into space is no longer wistful fantasy carried in science fiction novels. Just ask the folks at HighLift Systems in Seattle, Washington. Selling the idea of a space elevator, however, takes a lot of ground floor shoe leather and handshakes.
For the last few months, officials at HighLift Systems have been talking it up with an alphabet soup of government agencies, like NASA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), as well as the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

A Chandra image of NGC 720 shows a galaxy enveloped in a slightly flattened, or ellipsoidal cloud of hot gas that has an orientation different from that of the optical image of the galaxy. The flattening is too large to be explained by theories in which stars and gas are assumed to contain most of the mass in the galaxy.
According to the standard theory of gravity, the X-ray producing cloud would need an additional source of gravity - a halo of dark matter - to keep the hot gas from expanding away. The mass of dark matter required would be about five to ten times the mass of the stars in the galaxy.
An alternative theory of gravity called MOND, for Modified Newtonian Dynamics, does away with the need for dark matter. However, MOND cannot explain the Chandra observation of NGC 720, which shows that the dark matter halo has a different shape from that of the stars and gas in the galaxy. This implies that dark matter is not just an illusion due to a shortcoming of the standard theory of gravity - it is real.
The Chandra data also fit predictions of a cold dark matter model. According to this model, dark matter consists of slowly moving particles which interact with each other and 'normal' matter only through gravity. Other dark matter models, such as self-interacting dark matter, and cold molecular dark matter, are not consistent with the observation in that they require a dark matter halo that is too round or too flat, respectively.
X-ray: NASA/CXC/UCI

HubbleSite - News&Views - Hubble Spots an Icy World Far Beyond Pluto NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has measured the largest object in the solar system ever seen since the discovery of Pluto 72 years ago. Approximately half the size of Pluto, the icy world is called "Quaoar" (pronounced kwa-whar). Quaoar is about 4 billion miles away, more than a billion miles farther than Pluto. Like Pluto, Quaoar dwells in the Kuiper belt, an icy belt of comet-like bodies extending 7 billion miles beyond Neptune's orbit.

broadbandreports.com - the place for BROADBAND Not owned by a big company!

The Evil That Is the DMCA
by Adam C. Engst
Much has been written about what's wrong with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). After all, it's been used to jail programmers, threaten professors, and censor publications, and because of it, foreign scientists have avoided traveling to the U.S. and prominent researchers have withheld their work. In a white paper about the unintended consequences of the DMCA, the Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that the DMCA chills free expression and scientific research, jeopardizes fair use, and impedes competition and innovation. In short, this is a law that only the companies who paid for it could love.



Just who are we talking about here? Primarily the large movie studios and record labels, who own the copyrights on vast quantities of content and who have been working with one another and via their industry associations, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), to control how we are allowed to interact with that content. Their unity of purpose and storm-trooper tactics have led some to dub them the "Content Cartel."


However, the DMCA is merely one link in a chain that's being used by the Content Cartel and many others to restrict access to the shared cultural heri

TMe: Comic Book Grades, Glossary, and First Appearances

Newisys - Integrity and Innovation Newisys - and let's get its name straight - it's pronounced New Isys like the Egyptian goddess Isis - is the vehicle for vaulting AMD's 64-bit counter-Itanium Hammer chip into the big time. It's the privately held Texas technology gamble that's been quietly designing industrial-strength SledgeHammer, now Opteron, servers for the last two years and now it wants IBM, HP and Dell, you know, the major OEMs, to license and sell the things (CSN No 428). All the vendors would have to do is certify the boxes, create the collateral materials, educate their people and make a market. They wouldn't even have to build them. Newisys has made contract-manufacturing arrangements.

AgJournal Anthony G. Laos, president and chief executive of ProdiGene, Inc. was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as a member of the Board for International Food and Agriculture Development (BIFAD). Mr. Laos will serve a four-year term, expiring on July 28, 2005.
BIFAD, which consists of seven members all appointed by the President, provides advice to the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on international food issues such as agriculture and food security. BIFAD also assists and advises the U.S. Government Inter-Agency Working Group on Food Security in carrying out commitments made in the U.S. Country Paper for the November 1996 World Food Summit and on the Plan of Action agreed to at the summit.

Alejandra Guzman :: AleGuzman.com

JLAB Linux File Servers

Dalepak Direct Ltd - One for All Kameleon Touchscreen Replacement Remote Control One For All have developed a special electro-luminous display, which shows only the keys that are needed to operate the selected equipment. Animations appear on the screen to make it more intuitive and fun in use. The keys have a tactile feel that make operating more reassuring.

Home Welcome to Armadillo Aerospace!
Armadillo Aerospace is a small research and development team working on computer-controlled hydrogen peroxide rocket vehicles, with an eye towards X-Prize class vehicle development in the coming years. The team currently consists of a bunch of guys, a girl, and an armadillo named Widget. Our fearless leader, John Carmack, will lead us to space and, well, outer space. Please feel free to make yourselves at home and check out our journey.

Clearance Items

Researchers boost computer data storage with common materials - 11/11/02 An epoxy glue sold at hardware stores and a glass-like substance were formed into a DVD-size disk able to hold about 87 gigabytes, equal to 87,000 paperback books.

generation5.org - AISolutions

Overclocker Cafe - Xoxide Caffeinated Soap Review

pbase Photo Gallery: Galleries

ABCNEWS.com : U.S. Predator Kills 6 Al Qaeda Suspects

The Register First up and more seriously, a buffer overflow flaw has been unearthed involving Microsoft's implementation of Point-to-Point Tunnelling Protocol (PPTP), a Virtual Private Networking technology natively supported within Windows 2000 and Windows XP. PPTP support is an optional component in Windows NT 4.0, Windows 98, Windows 98SE, and Windows ME.

Octave Home Page GNU Octave is a high-level language, primarily intended for numerical computations. It provides a convenient command line interface for solving linear and nonlinear problems numerically, and for performing other numerical experiments using a language that is mostly compatible with Matlab. It may also be used as a batch-oriented language.
Octave has extensive tools for solving common numerical linear algebra problems, finding the roots of nonlinear equations, integrating ordinary functions, manipulating polynomials, and integrating ordinary differential and differential-algebraic equations. It is easily extensible and customizable via user-defined functions written in Octave's own language, or using dynamically loaded modules written in C , C, Fortran, or other languages.

ABCNEWS.com : Astronomers Find Oldest Star The first generation of stars that formed from the gas and dust cast outward by the explosion were massive, fast-burning and short-lived. When they exploded as supernovae they began tainting the universe with the first doses of heavier elements, which astronomers call metals. This debris formed stars like HE0107-5240, scientists said

ABCNEWS.com : Study: Being Social Keeps Mind Sharp Regardless of age or nationality or ethnic origin or gender, the results were the same, Ybarra says. Those who were most active socially also showed less mental decline.
"The more participants were socially engaged, the less their cognitive impairment," the researchers concluded.

Wayback link

Foods in Shogatsu

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LookLookJAPAN_Index

Osechi Ryori - Japanese New Year foods

Osechi ryori was eaten for the first time 650 years ago, and the osechi served today was eaten for the first time 300 years ago. Zoni, the soup served with rice cakes, traditionally made from duck stock, goes back as far as the Muromacahi period (14th century). It originally referred to the foods offered to the god of the New Year. The food was cooked together and then shared by the whole family. However, during the Edo era, zoni became so popular that it was eaten every day.
Osechi is eaten during the first three days of Shogatsu, prepared ahead of time, so that the mother of the house can share in the joys of oshogatsu without spending all her time in the kitchen. Osechi is also offered to the household god on a small table, each with its meaning, just as the ones in the jubako.

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mang_web

kristen's japan: weblog

Japan Update

The Beauty of the Cherry Blossom - Japan Update: Your Okinawa Home for News, Summit Information, Culture, and More

Japanese Flowers Homepage Kamakura, the 13th-century political center of Japan, and birthplace of three major Buddhist sects (including Zen, introduced from China), is a wonderful vision throughout the year. The ancient gardens and temples, the wooded hills, and the mountains hugging the ocean are alive with color and life. Here is my tribute to Kamakura, my home for the past decade.

Cherry Tree Types - National Park Service Cherry Trees
in Washington, DC

Giverny : Claude Monet's garden - flower list

Art of Japan

MotorSport Trailers' MS-1 Motorcycle Trailer!

Tina's FREE Live Webcam

Development History of the Honda Insight

Honda Insight / Toyota Prius Comparison: Hybrid Powertrain

INDIVIDUAL COMPUTERS [ jens schoenfeld ]

Truth & Toleration

Honda Motorcycles A hardtail-style rear suspension. Low seat. Clean lines. All seamlessly blended with the sort of exacting craftsmanship you expect from a Honda. The Shadow VLX is truly the epitome of a cool cruiser.

Motobykz guide to Suzuki's UK 2003 range of motorcycles and scooters.

The Maytag Home - Products Maytag® 26 cu. ft. Top Freezer Refrigerator
model MTB2656G

Refrigerators

Northland Designer Series built-in refrigerators

Zoo Life Shortens Elephant Lives in Europe, Study Says The studbook spans 40 years of births and deaths for African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana) and nearly 100 years for Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) in European zoos. An estimated 500 elephants are now in zoos across Europe, from Belfast to Paris.
The researchers also reviewed more than 100 elephant studies published since 1960, as well as 500 studies on stress biology and the welfare of other captive animals.
The findings from the demographic data startled the researchers. They found that Asian elephants in European zoos typically live about 15 years, only half as long as elephants in timber camps. Asian elephants can live as long as 65 years in the wild, the researchers said.
Rebecca Hawkes, a spokesperson for the RSPCA, said the extensive study "provides compelling, substantiated information that leaves no doubt that elephants' welfare is compromised in European zoos."

The Case Against Professionalism
How We Have Managed Industry Almost to Death

By Robert X. Cringely

This is a must read.

anil dash - archives October 25, 2002: blogger gets hacked

Symantec Security Response - Friendgreetings Horrible

ABCNEWS.com : Filmmaker Moore Crusades to Save the Net

Internet Under Attack
One of Moore's greatest fears is that the Internet will come under the same corporate onslaught as FM radio. It's hard for many of us to imagine, but FM radio used to be a lot like the Web. It was open, inexpensive, and independent. The music was all that mattered.
"Then they sucked the life right out of it," Moore growls, referring of course to the corporate interests that bought out the FM frequency in the 1970s. The result is mind-numbing musical homogeneity. "It doesn't matter where you go today," Moore laments. "The FM station in St. Louis sounds like the FM station in Tampa."
The same fate could await the Web.
"Sooner or later," Moore warns, "The forces of capitalism are going to say, 'Wait a minute, this should only be about making money. If it's not making us money, it shouldn't be on the Internet.' We have to prevent that from happening."

Compare Prices and Read Reviews on K-TEC Kitchen Champ 2000 champ2000c2 at Epinions.com

K-TEC Kitchen Champ 2000 Home Page The Kitchen
Champ 2000®
12 Appliances in one!

"Food preparation and canning equipment." Model C-4 - With the Bread Dough Maker the computer measures the resistance of the developing gluten in the dough and turns off the machine once it has developed perfectly. The Kitchen Champ mixer blends everything, from kneading up to 12 pounds of dough, to the delicate operation of beating egg whites into mounds of fluffy meringue. Your Kitchen Champ includes the most powerful blender on the market. The Kitchen Champ food processor makes quick work of grating cheese and preparing thin sliced vegetables. Makes fresh fruit smoothies, and turns any fruits or vegetables into a whole juice with the liquefier. Can be used to crush ice, make frozen desserts and grind grain into a fine flour. Grind coffee beans to cappuccino consistency in seconds. Chop fresh garden vegetables for salads, salsas, and stir fry quickly and easily. Peak watt usage 1300w. Extended warranty, one full year parts & labor, three-years motor.
$ 329.99

Bread Baking There's nothing quite like the aroma and taste of home-baked bread and rolls. Generally, by the time you eat store-bought bread, it's several days old, and may contain preservatives and other additives that are not particularly good for you. Like most things you prepare yourself, there are few similiarities to what's in the store. Unfortunately, so many in our culture have forgotten what good food really tastes like...fresh fruit right from the tree, vegetables from your garden, and home made bread!

Chef Brad's Kitchen Store and More

Obadiah's Storehouse - Dimension 2000 Mixer - Appliancesl

PC Connection : Netgear, Inc., RM356 56K Modem Router w/ Built-in 4-Port Ethernet Hub, RM356NA

Cisco - Modem-Router Connection Guide

Astronomy News

Apogee Inc.

Map Collections Home Page The Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress holds more than 4.5 million items, of which Map Collections represents only a small fraction, those that have been converted to digital form.
The focus of Map Collections is Americana and Cartographic Treasures of the Library of Congress. These images were created from maps and atlases and, in general, are restricted to items that are not covered by copyright protection.
Map Collections is organized according to seven major categories. Because a map will be assigned to only one category, unless it is part of more than one core collection, searching Map Collections at this level will provide the most complete results since the indexes for all categories are searched simultaneously. Maps can now be downloaded.

Wired News: Can a Hacker Outfox Microsoft? Eager to allay fears about the scope of Palladium, Biddle insisted that the impetus behind Palladium was solely to secure digital entertainment content and that he knew of no way that it could be used for the enforcement of software licensing. This assurance was made while he spoke on a panel at the USENIX Symposium.
Skeptical that this was actually the case, fellow panelist Lucky Green quickly filed two patents soon after the conference. The patents described methods for using the Palladium infrastructure to assist in the enforcement of software licensing. Green has a third patent application on the way.
The twist is that Green has no intention of implementing these techniques himself -- and in an interview with Wired News, declared his intention to "aggressively enforce his patents," if granted, to prevent anyone else from doing so.
Green has not disclosed the specifics of his patents. However, even without those details, Dan Burk, a professor at the University of Minnesota School of Law, says it is perfectly legal to patent any kind of automated technique, such as Amazon's One-Click patent and Priceline's reverse auction patent. Additionally, he says, "Improvements on known technologies are patentable."

MIT Technology

Increase in Autism Baffles Scientists As diagnoses of autism have increased throughout the nation, experts and parents have cast about for possible explanations, including genetics, birth injuries and childhood immunizations. The California study found that none of these factors could explain an increase of the magnitude reported there — more than triple from 1987 to 1998.

New Scientist The three-centimetre disc will be the same thickness as a DVD, but the phase-change material that records the data will be a mere 0.1 millimetres thick, compared to 0.6 millimetres for DVDs. Philips says this should mean there is less risk of beam distortion if the disc tilts when the portable device gets jogged. Portable DVD players will not play smoothly if jogged.
This jog-resistance is helped by making the glass and polymer lens that focuses the laser only 1.3 millimetres wide, just one-third the size of the lens in a DVD recorder. This means the optics need be only one-tenth the mass of their counterpart in a DVD, light enough for an electromagnet to keep them steady.
The drive is currently 0.5 centimetres thick, 5.6 centimetres long and 3.4 centimetres wide. The first versions of the disc will store one gigabyte on each side, but the dual-layer coating already used for DVDs will double the capacity to four gigabytes in total.

The Diary (of Alan Cox)

The Free World's Information and Software repository New laws in the USA not only make it illegal for US citizens to use or produce many kinds of useful software or inform/publishing research about such software (that's ok, after all it's their law), but also seek to prevent citizens of other countries from making such software or information available to the US.
Unless special measures are taken, this will make it hard for people in other parts of the world to exercise the rights defended and protected by their respective laws. One obvious special measure would be setting up a hosting service for these kinds of resources with the added extra of access control to make sure US residents and citizens won't be able to download the software or information. This way these resources will stay available for the rest of the world and only those countries who chose to be excluded (by Law) will be deprived of the software or information in question.
If you have any questions, suggestions or would like to help with this site, feel free to email us at: info@thefreeworld.net.

The Free World's Information and Software repository

freshmeat.net: Themes - The Antidesktop

ABCNEWS.com : They Took a Vacation, Now They're Dead Officials estimate that nearly 200 people were killed in Indonesia's worst terrorist attack, many of them Australian citizens enjoying the sapphire beaches, sun-drenched white shores and relatively cheap prices of Bali, a tourist paradise otherwise known as the Island of the Gods.

paul's vx page...

The LockItt Company - Motorcycle security - Locks, Luggage, Accessories - Distributors for ABUS locks, Oxford Luggage and Accessories, Cobralinks, Taffynackles and EMGO

In the last year, I have talked with a friend who owns a Quantum 6. I have also talked with and read the writings of others who have owned Questars or a Q6. And, I own an Intes 6 inch Mak that an experienced observer and telescope reseller considered to be one of the best he had seen for an Intes. I have since come to learn that it is rare to find a Maksutov that passes with a 100 percent perfect star test. None of the other Maksutov scopes I have seen or heard about have passed the star test, they all have some form of spherical aberration or zonal aberrations like a turned edge. So, it is not unrealistic that my Quantum 6 didn't pass with flying colors either. From what I have been told, no Maksutov maker takes the time to properly aspherize the secondary unless he is making the scope for himself; that's enough to eliminate a perfect star test.

MailWasher

SpamCop

MK19 40mm Machine Gun, MOD 3

ABCNEWS.com : Cleric Targets Dogs in Anti-Corruption Drive "I call on the judiciary to arrest all long-legged, medium- legged and short-legged dogs along with their long-legged owners," the newspaper quoted Gholamreza Hassani, Friday prayer leader in the northwestern city of Urumiyeh, as saying.
"Otherwise I'll do it myself," the Etemad newspaper on Sunday quoted the cleric as saying.

RiderSite Splash Page

Retirement Forms Home Page

ABCNEWS.com : The Dark Tale of a Missing Rocket Belt

ABCNEWS.com : Can Giraffes Talk? Von Muggenthaler has made a startling discovery. She says giraffes are communicating in a range far beneath our own hearing, called infrasound. And she says it's produced when the giraffes throw back their heads

ABCNEWS.com : Water-Powered Robot Explorers "You're saving the battery energy for the sensors, navigation and communication equipment," says Jones. "A thermal glider will run for like four years."

Ribbon to the Stars: Science News Online, Oct. 5, 2002 You board an elevator at the top of the platform and prepare for the ride of your life. After only a few minutes in the pressurized compartment, you leave Earth's atmosphere behind and the planet appears as a brilliant, ever-shrinking ball of blue. With Earth exerting less and less of a tug, you feel noticeably lighter. The sky gradually blackens and the heavens are aglow with more stars than you've ever seen before.
While you marvel at the crystal-clear view of the Milky Way, you try not to think about a harsher reality: For the next 7 days, your life will literally hang in the balance. All that will keep you aloft is a slender ribbon that stretches from the top of that mid-ocean platform to your destination 100,000 kilometers into space.

Who is William Gale?

Suzuki V-Strom

BBC NEWS | UK | England | Battery powered by leftover food Scientists in Bristol have developed a battery which generates electricity from organic waste.
The battery, or microbial fuel cell (MFC), costs just £10 to make and in the future, could allow leftovers from Sunday lunch to top up the power supply of a household.

Geek Toys: MicroCar Smackdown Pocket-sized radio controlled cars, available for $20 or less with controller -- and infinitely customizable -- are now taking the New World by storm. These tiny cars, which measure about 2 ½" long, have been a favorite of salarymen and schoolboys in Japan and throughout Asia. Imports have been available in the US for a while; some using illegal radio frequencies. In fact, Hobbico has been selling a US-friendly version of Tomy's Bit Char-G, the R/C MicroSizers, since the end of August.

ABCNEWS.com : Largest Solar System Found Since Pluto Peering out 1 billion miles beyond Pluto, astronomers have discovered a frozen world 800 miles across in what marks the biggest find in the solar system since the ninth planet was spotted 72 years ago.

TIME.com: Spoil Ports While the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and port employers resumed contract talks with the help of a federal mediator, little progress was evident. The impasse was costing businesses an estimated $2 billion a day, and threatened an already slumping U.S. economy that depends more than ever on a just-in-time supply chain. The West Coast docks support an estimated 4 million jobs across the U.S. In Fremont, Calif., an auto assembly plant owned jointly by GM and Toyota had to stop production for lack of engines and transmissions, idling 5,100 workers. Such retailers as the Gap, Target and Wal-Mart, which expect to do 40% of their annual business during the holiday season, would suffer a blow to their profits from any long disruption in supplies of toys, apparel and appliances from the Far East.

Deals Gap

Crossing Deals Gap at the Tennessee/North Carolina state line, the Dragon is considered by many as one of the world's best motorcycling and sports car roads. Anyone looking for an exciting highway will enjoy this stretch of US129.

The road is desolate and can be a real adventure in the winter months. We've had to deal with bears and wild boars in the road, trees down, and tractor-trailers taking-up both lanes in the curves. It is not a road for the squeamish, but if you're looking for a little excitement don't miss this one.

We've been driving the Tail of the Dragon since 1975. At first it was in the family car, then in our 1976 Corvette for many years. Now we have graduated to motorcycles. We have always loved the road, finding it exciting in whatever we happen to be driving.

In the summers we ride the Dragon at least twice a week. It's better than any roller coaster you've ever been on. Our favorite sections are the Hump and the esses just before Cattail Straight. Be ready to scrape your footpegs in some of these wild curves.

To us the Dragon begins on the North Carolina side at Fugitive Bridge with a view of the Cheoah Dam where Harrison Ford jumped in the movie The Fugitive. It ends 14 miles across the mountain at the Tabcat Creek Bridge in Tennessee. US129 climbs through The Slide, a steep series of "S" curves where one would not want to meet a tractor-trailer. The road then levels and straightens until a series o

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Morocco's miracle mule A mule has given birth to a male foal in a hamlet deep in rural Morocco.
No big deal, you may think, but in fact the birth was a minor scientific miracle.
A mule is the hybrid of a horse and a donkey and should be sterile - except in this instance.
There have only been two substantiated cases of a mule giving birth in the past quarter century: one in China in 1988 and the other also in Morocco in 1984.

Third in the fleet! - Announcing the SwarmChipped Starfish! :: LocustWorld :: The Information Revolution!!!

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LawMeme: Legal Bricolage for a Technological Age - Sherman, Set the Wayback Machine for Scientology The Wayback Machine (aka Archive.org, The Internet Archive) has, with little fanfare, removed entire domains from its archive in accordance with a request from Scientology's lawyers:
Lawyers for the Church of Scientology contacted the Internet Archive, asserted ownership of materials visible through the Wayback Machine, and those materials have been removed from the Wayback Machine. [email to LawMeme]
The problem is not that the Internet Archive received such a request from the Church of Scientology's lawyers, or even complied with the legal portions of the request, but that the Internet Archive has not taken minimal steps to defend free inquiry and access to information. LawMeme reveals the sordid details...

Wendy Richard Gallery II

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May 2002 SVRIDER.com - Suzuki SV650 and SV650S motorcycles

ABCNEWS.com : Scientist Induces Out-of-Body Experience

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Villages of Sage Creek Austin, Texas

New Scientist | Guide to the Quantum World

Psychologists in North Carolina say wearing velcro-covered mittens could help babies develop more quickly.
The Duke University team found babies wearing the mittens learned to snag and explore many objects more quickly.
Those who used the mitten showed more sophisticated abilities to explore objects.
The researchers placed the mittens on babies aged between two and three months who were still too young to grasp objects.
The mittens allowed the babies to snag Velcro-fitted toys merely by swiping at them.
Researchers say the findings emphasize the importance of providing plenty of opportunities for small children to learn about the world around them.
The research was sponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.
Lead officer Amy Needham, associate professor of psychological and brain sciences, told Science Daily"We found that the babies who had experience with the mittens outperformed the babies who didn't in a number of ways.
"For example, whether the experienced babies had the gloves off or on, they looked more at objects. And, with the mittens on, they produced more swipes at objects that were immediately preceded by visual contact."
The psychologists plan to carry out further tests to see whether wearing the mittens will have long-term consequences for each child's development.
Story filed: 18:45 Thursday 19th September 2002
Are you interested in this type of story?
If you're an Orange customer you can foll

BBSmates - dialing up the past

quad drive concept - TiVo Community Forum

Hacking The TiVo FAQ Wizard 1.0.3

A Detailed Look Inside TiVo No, I'm not a Hacker but just interested in what was in my TiVo. Maybe this will satisfy some peoples curiosity and cure the need to open another TiVo just to see what's in there. These pictures are from a 14 Hour and 30 Hour TiVo.

ABCNEWS.com : Wireless Badges to Keep Workers in Touch The result: a hands-free, voice-activated badge enabling workers to be reached by name, job title, or location within a building.
"All I need to do is push the button and say who I need to reach and I'm instantly put in touch with that person," Vocera Communications CEO Julie Shimer said.

ABCNEWS.com : How Garbage Fueled Ancient Agriculture somehow those early settlers had managed to enrich the soil with nutrients that persisted even to this day, turning what some have called a wet desert into a garden paradise. How they did it, and why the soil remained fertile for centuries despite the punishing heat and torrential rains that normally wash nutrients away, has stumped modern scientists.

Canesta Says "Virtual Keyboard" Is Reality

HighLift Systems

ABCNEWS.com : Hubble Spies 'Missing-Link' Mid-Size Black Holes

CIA -- The World Factbook -- Iran

Space News from the Space Coast

I now tell pollsters the exact opposite of what I think, and if I have no opinion, I make one up.
.
When I'm called by political phone rooms who want to know if they can count on me on Election Day, I always say yes regardless of who they are and what their candidate espouses.
.
You may be wondering what this has to do with personal technology. Everything, as a matter of fact. In the age of vast databases, privacy is under assault, and every personal computer linked to the Internet supplies information about the person using it. Every time we make a purchase or fill out a form online, that information is stored, and we are willing accomplices in the loss of privacy.
.
"We're victims of a war on privacy that's being waged by government eavesdroppers, business marketers and nosy neighbors," Simson Garfinkel writes in his book "Database Nation." "Unrestrained technology ends privacy. Video cameras observe personal movements; computers store personal facts; and communications networks make personal information widely available throughout the world."
.
Government records contain a lot of information about people. Many of those records have always been theoretically open to the public, but the logistical and physical difficulties of knowing where to look for the records and finding them makes it hard to do. But online research has largely done away with those difficulties and made it easy for anyone to find out many things about you.
.
If you hav

ABCNEWS.com : New Roller Coasters Are Faster and Safer

three different types of elephants exist on the African continent Using DNA extracted from the dung of wild elephants in Africa, biologists at the University of California, San Diego have determined that three different types of elephants exist on the African continent.
Their discovery, detailed in a paper to be published in the October 7 issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B, affirms the existence of the well-known savanna elephant and the recently recognized forest elephant of central Africa. But it also suggests that the elephants of west Africa, which live in both the forest and savanna, represent a third, genetically distinct population that has been diverging from the other two groups for some two million years.

Researchers isolate key part of cells’ ‘death’ signals

CamryMan's Welcome to CamryMan's Passing Lane, the Internet's premier website serving Toyota Camry and Solara owners and enthusiasts. If you've been looking for a place to visit and learn more about your vehicle, or share what you know with others, you've come to the right place.

BeBits - BeOS 5 Personal Edition

Power Plate

The Skeptic's Dictionary - A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions

Mind-Brain Lab: The Cult Test ost of us living in the work-a-day world were shocked, this March, to hear reports that a cult in California had committed mass suicide, thinking they could shed their earthly bodies to meet up with a UFO behind the Hale-Bopp comet. The Heaven's Gate cult, comprised of savvy computer programmers who designed web pages for the Internet, believed a lethal mixture of drugs and alchohol would free them from the human realm to complete the next stage of evolution with their leader, Marshall Herff Applewhite, known as Do. While the Earth and its inhabitants were doomed, Do preached, salvation by flying saucers awaited the fortunate few.

Religions, Cults, Sects, Denominations - Religions Overview There has been a recent explosion of cult activity; an estimated 1,500 to 3,000 cult groups flourish in North America, with 10,000 astrologers and 40 million of americans trusting the Zodiac, as recorded by the McCall magazine, with 20,000 santeria priests, "babalaos", only in Miami and New York. In San Francisco, the Satanic Church has 10,000 members. In England there are 500 cults, in France 60,000 witches. The Rosacrucians spend $250,000 per year only on postal stamps...
- To be on "error" in religion, is worse that to have a "cancer" in the lungs... If we love someone, and believe that he or she is in "error", the best we can do to show our love for him or her is like the Doctor, to try to extirpate that "error", that "cancer", even if it hurts... we have to love the "person", but hate his or her "cancer".

Who was Muhammad, Prophet of God or Evil Cult Leader? Ibn Warraq in his book The Quest For the Historical Muhammad presents a lot of convincing evidence that, the sayings attributed to Mohammad in the Koran and the Hadiths were not made by him. In this essay we will make the assumption that statements attributed to Muhammad in the Koran and the Hadiths were as Moslems believe actually made by him. We will consider the implications of Ibn Warraq's views at the end of the essay.
We will consider the hypothesis that Muhammad created Islam in order to become rich and gain power and we will see if statements attributed to him by the Koran and the Hadiths are consistent with that hypothesis.

The Cult Test

The Advanced Bonewits' Cult Danger Evaluation Frame

New Images

Microsoft new rule prohibits benchmarketing MOST OF US just click on those pesky Microsoft licence agreements just to get on with installing them as fast as we can.
But others, probably far more wise, decide to read through the content and ponder its import.
One such person who has done precisely this said there's a new little clause added to all Windows updates which he personally finds hard to stomach.
"* You may not disclose the results of any benchmark test of the .NET Framework component of the OS Components to any third party without Microsoft's prior written approval."
He points out that this significantly affects his ability to trade, as he's a software consultant.
He's often contracted to perform benchmarks on OSes for his clients. This new clause means, he says, that he's got to apply to the Grand Mufti of Licensing and Vole Central just to get permission to do his job.
This, he adds, is not only a significant imposition on him personally, but also threatens to damage his business.

Hurricane Advisories GUSTAV MOVING NORTHWARD AND APPROACHING THE OUTER BANKS...

A TROPICAL STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM CAPE FEAR NORTH
CAROLINA NORTHWARD TO PARRAMORE ISLAND VIRGINIA...INCLUDING THE
PAMLICO AND ALBEMARLE SOUNDS...AND INCLUDING THE SOUTHERN CHESAPEAKE
BAY SOUTH OF NEW POINT COMFORT VIRGINIA.

AT 11 AM EDT...1500Z...THE CENTER OF TROPICAL STORM GUSTAV WAS
LOCATED NEAR LATITUDE 34.4 NORTH...LONGITUDE 75.3 WEST OR ABOUT
60 MILES SOUTH-SOUTHEAST OF CAPE HATTERAS NORTH CAROLINA.

vstrom

MEMORY BANDWIDTH: STREAM BENCHMARK PERFORMANCE RESULTS

The Register Microsoft is worried about Peruvian Congressman Edgar Villanueva's proposal for his nation's government agencies to standardize on Free Software for their own internal use. But Villanueva makes an important point: everybody has to deal with the government. If a government uses proprietary software, its citizens will probably have to use the same software to communicate with it. A government web site that only supports Internet Explorer would lock citizens into that Microsoft product. In contrast, a government site using open standards and avoiding patented software would allow citizens to choose between many different kinds of software to access the site. Free Software, also called Open Source, is itself a kind of open standard - its source code is its own reference. Developers of proprietary software can use that reference to create interoperating programs, without infringing on the actual Open Source code. Thus, when a government uses Open Source, it assures its citizens a choice to purchase both proprietary and Open Source software for communicating with their government. The people's choice will be based on factors like functionality, quality, and convenience, rather than on customer lock-in.

BeGroovy - News

Flashed BIOS needed XP re-activation I got a new BIOS for a Gericom laptop I'm testing and flashed it with the BIOS, and all went swimmingly.
The good thing about flashing BIOS in a laptop is you don't have to sweat if your power's cut off for any reason since you'll probably have a few minutes battery life left, if you're very fortunate.
All went well at first, and I booted my legal copy of Windows XP Home edition, but when I got the XP welcome screen Microsoft annoyingly told me I'd need to activate my copy again. I could not log at all to the laptop with only activate or shut down available.
Of course, I was not close to any source for Internet access and apart from anything else was really ticked off with Mr Vole as I just could not do any work until I got to close to the Internet once more.
God help you if you're working on ancient relics in the Gobi Desert and you've got XP on your machine, and no satellite phone.

Internet Traffic Report

Space Elevator Visions

Ride Height Adjusters

KLR650 FAQ

San Francisco Thai Restaurants:  Khan Toke is San Francisco's Best Thai Restaurant

CBS News | Lawsuit: Iraq Involved In 9/11 Conspiracy | September 5, 2002 10:09:39

BBC NEWS | In Depth | Boston 2002 | Forest fires cool Amazonia

BBC NEWS | In Depth | Boston 2002 | Sunshine 'prevents cancer'

BBC NEWS | In Depth | Boston 2002 | GM bug to tackle tooth decay

Yahoo! News - Roberts assails Hollywood 'ageism' Hollywood clearly is clueless when it comes to understanding today's seniors; blind to the advances in medicine and self-care and increases in personal income that have made us a force to be reckoned with and a market to be exploited," she said. "Twenty years ago, it was accurate to show a senior coming in for his checkup dragging his oxygen tank. Today, it would be more appropriate to depict him carrying his tennis racket, but the youthful gatekeepers of the entertainment industry haven't caught up with these changes -- partially because they refuse to hire older writers who could craft story lines that reflect the reality of today's seniors."

ABCNEWS.com : Neanderthal Baby Skeleton Found

ABCNEWS.com : Scientists Mine Gold With Alfalfa

The Pitch Drop Experiment

Cannonball

buyingbikes.co.uk - Home of: Used Motorcycle Guide

Spiderman Busa

eBay Motors item 1856253814 (Ends Sep-12-02 15:29:53 PDT ) - : VT1100C2 SHADOW

AllMoto bike tests

Recent Earthquakes for Los_Angeles

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2002 GPNDG Map

ABCNEWS.com : A New Anti-Terror Mission for Special Ops Last month, a highly-classified memo leaked from the Pentagon reportedly indicated that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was considering ordering Special Operations Command to engage in covert missions to capture or kill top members of al Qaeda, the terrorist organization headed by Osama bin Laden.

projo.com | Providence | Technology | Subterranean Homepage News

Lawrence Lessig Lessig Blog

German News (English Edition)

Islamic association searched. Police in Braunschweig and Solingen searched apartments and the headquarters of an Islamic society. The Foreign Ministry announced that they were looking for documents belonging to the former Islamic association El Aksa, which was banned recently by Foreign Minister Schily. The police confiscated computers and documents in the searches.

Mandeville Weekly Online

Between 40,000 and 60,000 people are scheduled to gather in Johannesburg, South Africa from August 26 to September 4 to tackle the earth’s worsening environmental problems and to address the plight of the world’s poor.

You will be reminded that 10 years ago a similar circus was staged ostensibly called the Earth Summit on Sustainable Development in Rio De Janeiro, where despite an array of agreements to stave off climate change, preserving biodiversity and curbing pollutants, none of these accords have been implemented.

Why? The Kyoto Protocol on global warning, the most important of all the agreements, four years of extensive negotiation, is not even worth the paper it is written on as the United States, the worst carbon polluter on earth has opted out and there is nothing that the United Nations or the rest of the planet earth can do about it and that is not all.

Ten years ago in Rio, rich countries pledged 0.7% of the Gross National Product (GNP) in development aid, what’s the reality; the European Union’s share is 1/2, 0.33% while the USA is a mere 0.11%, now while the rich countries continue to throw nickels and dimes into the fund they spend six times more on farming subsidies, now do you understand the plan, makes you want to puke!

Everything Space Four independent teams of scientists, whose results appear as separate papers in The Astrophysical Journal, used Chandra to detect intergalactic gas with temperatures ranging from 300,000 to 5 million degrees Celsius. This gas forms part of a gigantic system of hot gas and dark matter that defines the cosmic landscape. The gaseous component alone contains more material than all the stars in the universe.
“We had strong suspicions from the Big Bang theory and observations of the early universe that this gas exists in the present era, but like a stealth aircraft it had eluded our detection,” said Claude Canizares of the

The Nando Times: Ousted Pakistan official wants to run for parliament ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (August 22, 2002 1:46 p.m. EDT) - Defying Pakistan's military rulers, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto filed Thursday as a candidate for parliament in the October elections despite the government's insistence that she is not qualified to run.

Bhutto, in a telephone interview with The Associated Press in London, said she was determined to return to Pakistan and run for parliament in the Oct. 12 election despite government threats to arrest her if she does.

"Life and death are in the hands of God," Bhutto said. "I am determined to go back to serve my countrymen."

Bhutto said she would come home "much before the elections" but did not way when. "I will contest elections," she insisted. "I will go back to my country."

Bhutto's application for certification as a candidate was submitted to election authorities by her Pakistan People's Party, since she lives in self-exile in London and the United Arab Emirates.

The Nando Times: Nigeria opposes stoning death LAGOS, Nigeria (August 22, 2002 3:11 p.m. EDT) - The Nigerian government is "totally opposed" to an Islamic court ruling sentencing a single mother to be stoned to death and will back the woman's appeal, the justice minister said Thursday.

Government lawyers will assist Amina Lawal's legal team with the case that will test the authority of Islamic courts to hand down such sentences, Justice Minister Kanu Agabi said.

An Islamic court in the northern town of Funtua on Monday rejected Lawal's appeal against the stoning sentence for having sex outside of marriage.

UNKNOWN MOVIES - GENRE INDEX

ABCNEWS.com : Philippine Rebels Behead 2 Captives Muslim extremists linked to the al-Qaida terror network beheaded two of six Jehovah's Witnesses they kidnapped in the southern Philippines and dumped their heads in a public market, authorities said Thursday.

ABCNEWS.com : Pakistani Christians Killed by the Dozen In a country where 97 percent of the 145 million population is Muslim, human rights groups have periodically protested that there is woefully insufficient protection granted Pakistan's religious minorities, which include Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and certain Shiite Muslim sects considered a renegade sect by the Sunni majority powerbase.
But Shahbaz Bhatti, chairman of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance, says the situation "has gone from bad to worse. After the Sept. 11 attacks, it's becoming unbearable as more and more Christians are becoming targets of Islamic militants."

"Beer goggles" are rose tinted

Ron Ayers Motorsports Superstore

TIME Magazine: Green Century — The Challenges We Face

’ß“cŒª“ñƒ‰ƒWƒIƒhƒ‰ƒ}�uSpirit of Wonder�v

Another lost link

Mammoth hopes rest on icy DNA
From Clem Cecil in Moscow

JAPANESE scientists hope to use parts of a mammoth preserved in the Siberian permafrost to impregnate an Indian elephant with its sperm and clone the extinct animal for display at an Ice Age wildlife park.
Organisers of the planned park are now populating it with species from that time in preparation for the much hoped-for return of the mammoth. Several hundred wild horses have been sent to graze in land set aside for the park in the far North East of Siberia on the River Kolyma.
Musk ox from another part of Siberia have also been imported, and discussions on buying bison have started with Canada.
A hunter discovered two frozen mammoth legs in the permafrost eight years ago, but because of lack of funds the local authorities only visited the site in 1997 and could not afford to excavate. Japanese interest in the find was excited and two universities funded an expedition this month.
The mammoth appears to have been killed by an avalanche which made it tumble on to its rump, and crushed it on to the permafrost between 25,000 and 30,000 years ago.
The science departments from the universities of Kinki and Tifu in Japan, who have sponsored the excavation of the legs, hope to receive Russian permission in the autumn to export fragments of mammoth skin for research.

Information Wave Technologies has announced it will actively deny the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) from accessing the contents of its network. Earlier this year, the RIAA announced its new plan to access computers without owner's consent for the sake of protecting its assets. Information Wave believes this policy puts its customers at risk of unintentional damage, corporate espionage, and invasion of privacy to say the least.

Due to the nature of this matter and RIAA's previous history, we feel the RIAA will abuse software vulnerabilities in a client's browser after the browser accesses its site, potentially allowing the RIAA to access and/or tamper with your data. Starting at midnight on August 19, 2002, Information Wave customers will no longer be able to reach the RIAA's web site. Information Wave will also actively seek out attempts by the RIAA to thwart this policy and apply additional filters to protect our customers' data.

Information Wave will also deploy peer-to-peer clients on the Gnutella network from its security research and development network (honeynet) which will offer files with popular song titles derived from the Billboard Top 100 maintained by VNU eMedia. No copyright violations will take place, these files will merely have arbitrary sizes similar to the length of a 3 to 4 minute MP3 audio file encoded at 128kbps. Clients which connect to our peer-to-peer clients, and then afterwards attempt to illegally access the network will be imm

ABCNEWS.com : Scientists Hope to Build Deep-Sea Station The proposed Ocean Atmosphere Seafloor Integration Study, or OASIS, would offer aquanauts (the underwater version of astronauts) a permanent perch on the continental shelf about 600 feet below the ocean surface. And unlike a journey to the International Space Station, a trip to an ocean base could be as easy as stepping on an elevator and pushing "down."

Abstracts 1-75 In the environmental field, carbon and nitrogen content are of great importance in various applications. Researchers can assess the effects on the overall carbon cycle by understanding on a micro level the effects of carbon and nitrogen concentrations on biological life forms in various matrices, including soils and seawater. More importantly, scientists are recently gaining insight into the ability of nitrogen to influence carbon concentrations, or "fertilize", in either fresh or saltwater, a process known as eutrophication. In years past, although many strides were made in measuring carbon levels with high sensitivity, total nitrogen measurement was not as sensitive as well as proved to be time consuming. However, using the combustion oxidation method in conjunction with chemiluminescence detection, an analyst can simultaneously measure carbon and total nitrogen levels with high accuracy and sensitivity in less than four minutes.

The Energy-Environment Nexus U.S. electricity generation mix from 1950 to 2000. Fossil fuels provide more than 70 percent of our electricity--52 percent from coal, 16 percent from natural gas, and 3 percent from oil. The issue facing us is how we as a nation can move toward a more sustainable electricity future. The word "sustainable" means different things to different people. To some, it means integration of the social, economic, and environmental domains. To some it means energy that lasts forever. And to some it means energy with no environmental cost for its production and use. Energy from every source has environmental or cost consequences. The challenge for us as a society is to agree on a practical definition of sustainability and then to develop a road map to achieve it. The road map should include public policies, incentives, and research and development (R&D) agendas.

ABCNEWS.com : Iraqi Embassy in Berlin Seized The group sent a statement to Reuters saying: "In the name of the Iraqi people and their legitimate leadership, the Iraqi opposition, we declare that the liberation of Iraqi soil begins today. We are taking over the Iraqi Embassy in Berlin and with this the first step in the liberation of our beloved fatherland."

Report and Recommendations of the West Stoddart Gas Committee The West Stoddart gas processing facility will then purify the gas by removing hydrogen sulphide and carbon dioxide, which constitute the “acid gas”, recover a portion of the hydrocarbon liquids content, and dispose of the recovered acid gas (approximately 530 103m3/day) by injecting it into 2-3 injection wells located near the proposed gas processing plant site.

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World Tribune.com: Saudis still funding terror, Congressional panel told

Testimony to the U.S. Congress contradicted assertions by the Bush administration that Saudi Arabia has stopped financial support for organizations linked to terrorism.

Last week, three Saudi princes and major Saudi banks were listed as defendants in a $1 trillion suit filed by the families of the victims of the Sept. 11 Al Qaida attacks on New York and Washington. Among the princes is Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz.

Levitt told the Senate that Saudi Arabia has avoided a genuine crackdown on Islamic charities accused of funding terrorists because this could reveal donations by high-ranking Saudi princes. He said that despite the suicide attacks on New York and Washington "Saudi officials have exhibited, at a minimum, a clear pattern of tolerating funds earmarked for extremist purposes."

The testimony to the Senate was in line with that of other U.S. counterinsurgency experts that dismissed Saudi efforts to halt financing to Al Qaida and allied groups.

Levitt cited several Saudi-based charities that have been determined to finance Al Qaida. They include the International Islamic Relief Organization, its parent Muslim World League and the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia.

The European Union has done little to contribute to the U.S.-led war against terrorism, Levitt said. He cited complaints by U.S. officials that European allies have contributed few names to the list of alleged terrorist financiers. He said Europe has not acted against all of the names on the list of U.S. terrorist financiers.

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ABCNEWS.com : Nigerian Court Upholds Death by Stoning An Islamic high court in northern Nigeria rejected an appeal today by a single mother sentenced to be stoned to death for having sex out of wedlock.

SteelCrete by Simple Building Systems Inc. SteelCrete, invented by Tony Ruiz, is a patented composite building system. It uses metal studs embedded into thin concrete (1.5" to 2") to form panels for construction that are stronger-but-lighter than solid concrete, concrete block or any other conventional construction method. The bonding of the concrete and metal becomes so strong that this building system is a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. SteelCrete gives you a competitive edge over tilt-up and other building systems by allowing you to build faster, stronger buildings at lower cost.

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CAMILLE PAGLIA REPLIES:

Thank you for that excerpt from my Salon column - written ten months before the attacks on the World Trade Center. Quite frankly, reading it now sends a chill through me. I warned again and again in Salon about the dangerous insularity of American culture, which was worsened by the tilt of the Clinton administration toward p.c. domestic issues and away from world affairs. (I speak as a disillusioned Democrat who voted for Bill Clinton twice.)

The abject failure of the major media to pursue the issue of terrorism in the years following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing will live in infamy. I blame the media as well as the superstructure of the Democratic party for the appalling delusionalism of the Monica Lewinsky episode, which began in 1998 and consumed the news for two years.

I have not changed my position, as repeatedly expressed in Salon: first, any politician has the right to a randy private life, but it should not be conducted on government property, especially not in revered public space like the White House. Second, any politician who has disgraced his office and his family should resign as an act of honor.

When the Lewinsky scandal broke, Democrat big wigs should have muscled Clinton out the door and let Al Gore assume the presidency. The nation would have been spared the obsessive distraction of the Lewinsky affair - with its incompetent, foot-dragging, whey-faced wimp of an independent counsel (Ken Starr) a

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Language gene found Researchers today unveil the single gene that, when it goes wrong, causes this speech breakdown. The gene - the first to be definitively linked to language - switches others on and off, and so could lead the way through a genetic network of language learning and use.

The Moon Trees Apollo 14 launched in the late afternoon of January 31, 1971 on what was to be our third trip to the lunar surface. Five days later Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell walked on the Moon while Stuart Roosa, a former U.S. Forest Service smoke jumper, orbited above in the command module. Packed in small containers in Roosa's personal kit were hundreds of tree seeds, part of a joint NASA/USFS project. Upon return to Earth, the seeds were germinated by the Forest Service. Known as the "Moon Trees", the resulting seedlings were planted throughout the United States (often as part of the nation's bicentennial in 1976) and the world. They stand as a tribute to astronaut Roosa and the Apollo program.