Monday, July 29, 2002

BBC NEWS | England | Dung power station fires up

The Register The prospect of Peru's legislators mandating free software for government departments continues to move mountains. First we had Bill Gates' shock donation to the Peruvian president, and now the US ambassador to Peru has written a letter to the president of the Peruvian congress opposing the move, according to Wired.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Boeing tries to defy gravity Researchers at the world's largest aircraft maker, Boeing, are using the work of a controversial Russian scientist to try to create a device that will defy gravity.
The company is examining an experiment by Yevgeny Podkletnov, who claims to have developed a device which can shield objects from the Earth's pull.
Dr Podkletnov is viewed with suspicion by many conventional scientists. They have not been able to reproduce his results.

Thursday, July 25, 2002

TMB Website

Our TMB triplet refractors use very high homogeneity Super ED glass as the center element, full multi-coatings on all six surfaces, a fully temperature compensated lens cell, and zonal correcting non-equal internal radii. Optimizing these elements allow our lenses to satisfy the most serious planetary and deep space observer, as well as the most critical CCD or photographic user.

BatteryWeb.com - Battery Uses and Chemistry

ZDNet: Tech Update: Enterprise Hardware / IBM announces Opteron support but lacks business rationale Although AMD's Opteron has not yet shipped, IBM will be one of the first major software vendors to announce support for the dual personality processor that will be able to run 32- or 64-bit operating systems and applications.
According to IBM spokesperson Sean Tetpon, IBM will showcase at LinuxWorld its DB2 database running on an Opteron-based system provided by a Newisys, a newcomer to an already crowded server market. The system will be running a 64-bit distribution of Linux provided by SuSE.
The decision to support Opteron is especially interesting in light of the fact that IBM's hardware division is turning a cold shoulder towards the AMD processor. It was my investigation into Opteron's chances for success that had me so captivated by IBM's decision to support it.

(07/12/2002)Graphics -Company:The University of Texas System Administration,Job Title:Electronic Media Coordinator - Job# 02-05-29-01-8504. The University of Texas System Administration seeks a qualified candidate to work in a team environment, provide professional, technical and administrative skills to support UT TeleCampus faculty in the development and instruction of online courses. Required Qualifications - High school diploma or GED with a minimum of five years of experience in web design and instructional design on the web. Preferred Qualifications- Bachelor's degree and three years of experience. Functions - Assist UT TeleCampus faculty in the design and development of web-based courses. Provide course development training and technical support to faculty and course production personnel. Create web-based graphics, animations and other course elements to support the development of UT TeleCampus courses, web site and marketing materials. Use Macromedia Dreamweaver or comparable web editor, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Flash extensively. Manage own time and projects. Work successfully in a team environment. Communicate well verbally and have good written communication and interpersonal skills. Monthly salary: $3499-$3691 depending upon qualifications. 40 hours per week - 8am to 5pm The University of Texas System Administration application for employment is available through our website at www.utsystem.edu/ohr. Interested individuals should submit a letter of interest, application for employment, and the names of five r

(07/24/2002)I.T. -Company:Fuddruckers,Job Title:Help Desk Administrator. Fuddruckers is a worldwide restaurant chain which is experiencing exciting growth. We are looking for a full-time Help Desk Administrator to work in our Executive office located in Austin. Responsibilities include answering incoming calls and troubleshooting technology issues, follow up and resolution of those issues, liaison with outside software vendors, and assisting the Director of Field Information Technology with IT concerns. Candidate requirements: Working knowledge of Windows 95/98/2000/NT, knowledge of peripheral computer equipment such as scanners, printers, etc., understanding of hardware and software installation and maintenance, comprehension of networks, logins and connectivity, excellent communication (both written and oral) and analytical problem solving skills, ability to work in an fast paced environment with minimal supervision, nice sense of humor, comfortable working on a team with sr. management, customer service orientation, responsible, organized, good common sense, and capable of keeping information confidential. PC Anywhere and/or Compris SW experience are strongly desired. We offer a competitive salary of $28-32K with a comprehensive benefits package which includes the usual benefits as well as restaurant discounts, health club subsidy, EAP, 401(k) match, flexible spending accounts, and a terrific work environment. Please email resumes if possible, as we are looking to fill this position quickly. Applicants only. No phone

Let's WARCHALK! Warchalking
Collaboratively creating a hobo-language for free wireless networking

Wednesday, July 24, 2002

UCLA scientists discover hormone may spur dramatic weight loss

Chandra discovers dwarf galaxies give universe breath of fresh oxygen - Marshall Center Space News Release 02-183 (07-23-02)







Astronomers have discovered a nearby dwarf galaxy is spewing oxygen and other "heavy" elements into intergalactic space. This observation from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory supports the idea that dwarf galaxies may be responsible for most of the heavy elements between the galaxies.


'Tenchi Muyo!


Cloudy Nights TMB Review of TMB 152


This is a short review of the TMB Optical 152mm Apochromat. Your reviewer has had about 2 years experience behind the eyepiece. Being a professional EE in the machine vision field allows me to appreciate a fine optical instrument.



Solar Images Below are selected solar images I've acquired with a cannibalized inexpensive webcam (the guts of a Philips Vesta 675), cooled with two small CPU fans. The camera is attached to an inexpensive 150 mm f/8.0 achromatic refractor (one of the recent Chinese imports). The CCD in the Vesta series of webcams is a 659×494 5.6 micron square-pixel Sony color CCD. The onboard electronics resamples to produce 640×480 8-bit RGB output.

ABCNEWS.com : NYC Tree Gets a Second Life in China

Untitled Document An asteroid more than a mile wide is on course to devastate the earth in 17 years.

Tuesday, July 23, 2002

Leo McKern, star of Rumpole, dies at 82 - smh.com.au

The Poultry Ring

Henspa Features

ABCNEWS.com : Motley Group Builds Safe Passages Calculations show Conservation International plus two other environmental groups have placed almost 1.4 percent of the terrestrial Earth under protection. That's a lot of Earth. Why go to the trouble?
Consider the red fox — they're hardly a rare animal, but at Yosemite National Park the red fox has vanished.
In other national parks, grizzly bears, lynx and river otters have disappeared. Harvard professor and eminent biologist Edward O. Wilson says there's a pattern here — national parks are "leaking" species.
"Species are going extinct in the parks with no particular pressure being put on them by hunting or disturbances of the habitat by humans," he says. "[National parks are] the greatest idea America ever had with reference to the environment, but they're not enough to hold on to all our species."

Vmyths.com- Truth About Computer Virus Myths & Hoaxes

A.M. Kuchling's page

KQ Web: Joan Jeanrenaud Press Release Date: August 6, 1999
The Kronos Quartet has announced that cellist Joan Jeanrenaud has resigned from Kronos and cellist Jennifer Culp has joined the group.

Monday, July 22, 2002

webBikeWorld - Motorcycle products, motorcycle clothing, motorcycle apparel, motorcycle technical articles and more

VAFC Installation Phillips High Intensity Discharge (HID) Kit Installation:
By Tony Leung aka Tony the Tiger - HTRacing@hotmail.com
Step by Step Procedure:

Upgraded Headlights

Cool New Tools by Sam Martin

HID SYSTEMS An HID lamp will last four to five times as long as a halogen lamp. We guarantee at least 2,000 Hrs. For most people, this translates into the life of the vehicle and probably the life of the next vehicle as well.
The HID conversion kit is covered by a 1-year limited warranty against defects in materials and workmanship under normal use and conditions. The warranty is void if the cause of damage or failure is due to abuse, neglect, improper installation, use other than the intended application, accidents, natural disasters, or acts of God.
All bulbs are tested and burned in prior to delivery.

Friday, July 19, 2002

Microsoft Palladium


Enter Palladium: Microsoft and its partners claim that their new security architecture can protect our systems. But it also presents a grave risk to our very ability to run open-source software on commodity hardware.

The definitive attacks on the technology have come via Robert X. Cringely and Ross Anderson. But both agree that Palladium will allow only authorized code to run on systems equipped with compliant hardware.

While this sounds like a good thing, its real purpose seems to be to protect content providers, to permit Microsoft to enforce draconian licensing schemes, and quite possibly to allow Microsoft to act as gatekeeper for all PC software, allowing them to collect royalties on that software as though those systems were nothing more than video game consoles.

Linux on a Leash
Unless Microsoft signs a particular Linux kernel, for example, it will almost certainly refuse to run on Palladium-equipped hardware. If a developer releases an open-source package for a Palladium-approved operating system, it will not run unless the binary has been signed. Because not every user will be able to sign binaries, end-users' ability to rebuild software from source may be eliminated entirely.

To top it all off, Palladium is unlikely to protect users from most exploits. There are a great number of attacks that can be executed within applications, as those applications have such power and reach. Microsoft Outlook viruses can continue to spread, as can other macro2

Installation of Residential Wind Power System

Wind Turbine Generators

Real Goods - Bergey Excel 10,000-Watt Wind Generator

The Air 403 and Windseeker wind generators for your wind power projects

DSIRE: Incentives by State: Incentives in TX

SWWP Whisper Wind Generators & Towers - Wind Power

Whisper 175 (3000W), Standard @ 48v, Adj. to 12, 24, 32v 0 $3,971.00

Wind Power Building a wind generator from scratch is not THAT difficult of a project. You will need a shop with basic power and hand tools, and some degree of dedication. Large wind generators of 800 watts and up are a major project needing very strong construction, but small ones can be built mostly of wood, and be up and flying in a weekend! In fact, we highly recommend that you tackle a small wind turbine before even thinking about building a large one. A machine shop in which you can turn metal parts on a lathe is very helpful, but any automotive shop that is equipped to turn brake rotors could make these parts for you at low cost.

Northern Arizona Wind & Sun - Solar electric reference and photovoltaics information.


This website is primarily for technical and basic product information and photovoltaic reference.

Texas Solar Energy Society

TREIA Texas Renewable Energy Industries Association

BLM-Glennallen Field Office - Denali Highway

Nice Website, nice clean design, good subject well covered.


Denali Highway, Alaska


Denali Highway, Alaska--I must admit, the idea of driving along a potholed, gravel road for 135 miles did not entirely captivate me when my uncle first brought it up. Visions of flat tires and overheated radiators deflated any potential enthusiasm.
A few days later, though, as I stared at the snow-capped mountain range spreading itself out before me, fronted by spruce-covered hills and a swift-flowing, serpentine river, I decided that if a flat tire was the price of admission, a journey down the Denali Highway was worth every pump of the jack.
Its breathtaking vistas had a wild, untamed look, intensified by the raw fury of its rushing, glacier-fed rivers. Here, I realized, nature was in control. Mankind was but a footnote. Only the presence of the dusty, pebble-strewn highway stretching into the distance gave any hint that men had ever set foot on this remote landscape.

Thursday, July 18, 2002

Honda Insight. Car Reviews at Vancouver Car Net

Wolves in Green Clothing The misperception and misdirection of the movement was dramatized by the 30th Earth Day celebration in April where founding father Denis Hayes highlighted a clean car as a major goal. Not a word from the environmentalist or his peers about public transportation. Not a word about planning and zoning and stopping sprawl or highway building. No endorsement of biking or bike paths; no walking, no pedestrian advocacy no traffic calming statements. Not an effort to emulate, say, the no-drive days that Europeans practice or the engaging radicalism by Carbusters magazine based there. No word on cleaning the existing 200 million vehicles which contribute 25 percent of heat-trapping gases

Used car prices & car locator for Honda Insight's. Get the best used Honda Insight price and buy a used Honda Insight in your area. This thing works nicely. Terms: Engine -- 3 cyl 1 liter VTEC. Motor -- 18hp electric motor The motor is between the engine and the clutch. This is the only beef I have with the design, because it means that regenerative braking doesn't work when you let out the clutch. It's a two s... more

Honda Insight used car prices, used autos at Edmunds TMV® Pricing:
$13,493

Bergey WindPower Proven Performance The National Wind Technology Center (NWTC) is part of NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory), one of US-DOE's national laboratories. the NWTC, with a staff of 80 and an annual budget of $20 million, is America's lead research organization and facility for wind turbine research. It is located outside Boulder, Colorado in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
While the NWTC has only a modest annual average wind speed (4.5 m/s or 10 mph), it is a very good place to test the robustness of a wind system because it regularly gets wind storms with winds in excess of 54 m/s (120 mph). Dozens of commercial and prototype wind turbines have been damaged or destroyed by these fierce winds while undergoing testing at the Rocky Flats site of the NWTC.

Bergey Excel Install

10kW Bergey Excel Grid-tie Wind Turbine w/Inverter 10kW Bergey Excel Grid-tie Wind Turbine w/Inverter BWC EXCELManufactures List: $22,900.00AAPS Price: $20,610.

Real Goods - Bergey Excel 10,000-Watt Wind Generator

Mr. Electricity®: The Silent Electronic Generator

MINI WIND GENERATOR STEPPER MOTOR ALTERNATOR

Energy Alternatives - Wind Design Section.

Microwave wind generator

DOE Wind Energy Program - Wind Energy Basics & Favorite Links

USING A 5 1/4 INCH FLOPPY DRIVE MOTOR AS A GENERATOR

Hugh Piggott - Scoraig Wind Electric

HOMEBUILT WIND GENERATOR

So You Want to Build a Wind Generator - M. Sagrillo

Allan McKay's webpage

Beyond3D - Weebles Wobble...

CG Channel's March Challenge Participants
WOW

ACP - American Cosplay Paradise

Cosplayer Coley Lou

ABCNEWS.com : Blasphemy Results in Death Sentence Under Pakistani law, only the word of a Muslim accuser is needed to prosecute a non-Muslim on blasphemy charges, which can carry the death penalty upon conviction.

Yahoo! Groups : vstrom Messages :5446-5460 of 5460


Got my September RoadBike magazine in the mail yesterday. Lengthy review by Mark Zimmerman. Needless to say he loved it. Some noteable lines:

"Every ride on the V-Strom was like waking up on Christmas morning and discovering that Santa had been very, very good to me."

"This could have been the shortest road test ever written: I got on the bike, rode it 50', and fell in love with it."

"Feel like humiliating your buddies on their fresh-baked sport bikes? Just pick a road."

And the best line is the last line of the article:

"I can honestly say that the V-Strom holds the singular honor of being the most fun bike I've ever tested."

Wednesday, July 17, 2002

Rick's Rides - Austin, Texas (Links)

Foistware/Spyware: WebHancer According to the WebHancer website, the purpose of this program is as follows:
"webHancer Customer Companion resides on the end-user's computer, where it transparently monitors Internet performance. webHancer Customer Companion measures overall network/site delay and the performance times experienced by actual end-users."
Infection method:
The majority of users running WebHancer are not aware they are running it, unless they have noticed system side-effects or unusual data transfers from their machine. WebHancer, like "Comet Curse", falls into the category of "everything-installs-it-can't-get-rid-of-it" foistware, with completely unrelated software secretly installing the WebHancer product on the user's system. (Given this, I think the program should be more aptly called "WebCancer" :) In one of the most user-hostile moves I've seen in a while, the clandestine WebHancer install will alter critical Registry keys relating to Windows Sockets, causing the system's Internet connection capabilities to break if the user dares to try uninstalling the spy. WebHancer's makers claim not to modify system files (which is, technically, true) although they have confirmed that attempting to remove it will break your system.

Peru mulls Free Software, Gates gives $550k to Peru Prez


The Register's department of strange coincidences can't help noticing that yesterday Bill Gates met Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo, and graciously donated around $550,000 worth of money, software, and consulting to be used by Peru for education and e-government.

You may recall a while back somebody impersonating the Prime Minister of Canada had a great deal of trouble even getting Bill on the phone, Bill being a bit sniffy about the level of head of state he's prepared to give airtime to these days. But heads of state who want a summit with Bill, and even a nice jpeg of the ceremony put up on the Microsoft site, just have to set the correct alerts flashing.

Peru, you see, has been threatening to outlaw Windows by mandating Free Software in government departments. And seriously folks, it is not widely known (or at least, not widely enough) that when major Microsoft contracts or customers are in peril, Bill is frequently deployed as the Ultimate Weapon. You may think he's supposed to be piloting Longhorn to completion these days, but he still has plenty of time for being a supersalesman.

LinuxHardware.org | System of the Year X2: Part One

04/13/19 HOW IOMEGA LOST ITS ZIP In recent months, enraged customers of Iomega Corp. have been filling homegrown Web sites with angry tales of the ''click of death.'' That's the sound that Zip drives, Iomega's popular computer storage devices, make when they malfunction. But Iomega Chief Executive Kim B. Edwards downplayed the trouble, saying it affected fewer than 1% of Zip drives.
Bad call. The click of death is the sort of operational snafu--along with other production and service lapses--that led to the kiss of death for Edwards. The hard-charging salesmeister--considered by many the top consumer marketer in the stodgy PC peripherals business--shocked the computer industry when he resigned on Mar. 25. ''We want to grow this company to $10 or $20 billion, not just go to $3 billion. To do that, you need to do things differently,'' says Chairman David J. Dunn, who named director James E. Sierk interim CEO while the company searches for a permanent chief.

Riderhaus

Krauser GmbH - K-Wing-System

Tuesday, July 16, 2002

BBC News | MIDDLE EAST | Israeli bus ambushed in West Bank Seven people have been killed in an attack on an Israeli bus near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, Israeli army officials say.

TIME.com: How Bush's World Turned Upside Down

Perhaps its time to call for Impeachment?



Saturday, Jul. 13, 2002
Like Wall Street, President Bush had a dismal week. Monday's poorly handled press conference on the goings-on at his own Texas oil company during the 1980s was followed, Tuesday, by a Wall Street speech that left investors and even congressional Republicans unconvinced. That, and the stock market's worst week since September 11 left GOP pollsters aghast at how suddenly, and fundamentally, their world appears to have changed. The political landscape across which George W. Bush rode to power two years ago has been inverted — peace and security supplanted by war and anxiety; boundless prosperity by fretful, seemingly inexorable, decline; a culture that had revered its corporate CEOs suddenly treating the title itself as grounds for suspicion

FT.com Home Global

ABCNEWS.com : Two Al Qaeda Suspects Nabbed Following a nearly hour-long chase off the coast of Pakistan this weekend, coalition naval forces made their first arrest at sea of al Qaeda suspects.

911-strike home

Monday, July 15, 2002

FiberTech

EAA - The Leader in Recreational Aviation - Oshkosh, Wisconsin

Southwest Windpower - Renewable Energy Made Simple

Structural Insulated Panel Association - SIPA

R&C Solar/Wind Powered Home


This web site describes all the fun my wife and I have had building a sun and wind-powered off-grid home on remote property. Before embarking on this adventure, we found it helpful to read the stories of others, so we wanted to return the favor. We still remember what a strange concept this project seemed early on. It took a while to get past that part, perhaps it will be a little easier for those who read about our experience. The purpose of the site is to give you a feel for planning, building, and living in this home. We hope that some readers will find that useful.

Real Goods - Products For An Ecologically Sustainable Future

Friday, July 12, 2002

Yahoo! News - Scientists Build Virus from Scratch WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Using only a genetic map as a guide, U.S. researchers said on Thursday they had built a polio ( news - web sites) virus from scratch and used it to infect and paralyze lab mice.

It is the closest anyone has yet come to creating life in a test tube -- although scientists deny a virus, which is not a living cell but which can replicate itself, is alive in the same way a bacterium, a plant, or a human being is.
Nonetheless, it has genetic material like all other life.

Flash Capacitors from Disposable Cameras

Thursday, July 11, 2002

CPRM on ATA - Full Coverage

The Register Congress' most enlightened public representative Rick Boucher has vowed to introduce a bill that outlaws share-denial jinxed audio CDs, and as a bonus, has promised to re-examine the webcasting copyright racket that forced so many small-time webcasters to quite the airwaves recently.

We don’t know what holy light guides Rep. Boucher, but it's a holy light indeed: he's singular amongst public representatives in daring to reclaim the works of popular culture as something that belong to The Commons (that's us) … rather than something that belongs in perpetuity to an industry that depends on its legitimacy on an antiquated distribution system.

Boucher has vowed to redress the draconian effects of the DMCA with new legislation before, and this week he delivered on his promise: explaining legislation that preserves the right of 'fair use'.

Boucher called for the Library of Congress royalty system to be scrapped:-

The Village Voice: CityState: Getting Away With Murder by Wayne Barrett hen George Pataki was a Republican assemblyman in 1990 and Mario Cuomo was running for certain re-election while trying to roll up a record victory margin to impress national Democrats, the young, three-term legislator led a filibuster against the state budget. Finally, at 3 a.m., With no reporters left in the Capitol, the Democratic Speaker suspended the rules of debate and moved for an immediate vote, passing the budget over the outraged protests of Pataki, who later called this the "most difficult day" in his decade-long legislative career.
This is how Pataki summed up the experience just four years ago in an autobiography no one bought: "This wasn't just a policy disagreement. It was a bipartisan agreement to enact a budget that put the interests of government—more accurately those of politicians and their careers—ahead of the interests and needs of the people of New York.

The Village Voice: CityState: Inconvenient Truth by Dan Bischoff In the ever shrinking community of serious investigative reporters in this city, Robbie will be remembered as a dedicated pro who followed his reporting wherever it took him, no matter whom it offended or what it meant for his own career. In 1993, for example, Friedman castigated the FBI in the Voice for ignoring information it had developed on the Muslim extremists behind the first bombing of the World Trade Center, warning that without stronger action, terrorists would strike at the towers again. Though the story would cost him valuable sources within the FBI, Friedman published it and won a Society of Professional Journalists Award for Best Investigative Reporting in a Weekly

JOAN JEANRENAUD

Free Music Download, MP3 Music, Music Chat, Music Video, Music CD, ARTISTdirect Network JOAN JEANRENAUD: Overview [Family Tree]


Even though Joan Jeanrenaud's name may not sound all that familiar, she is a world-renowned cellist, surely the best known in the avant-garde classical field. But for many music lovers, she remains "the girl in Kronos Quartet." Jeanrenaud spent 20 years with the groundbreaking string quartet, recording with it over 30 albums and performing more than 2,000 concerts. In 1999, she ... more

New Albion Artists: Joan Jeanrenaud

Protocol for interview with Charlotte Moorman

Reuters | The World's Leading Provider of Financial Information and News The low-interest rate loans, which totaled more than $180,000, allowed Bush to buy 105,000 Harken shares through a stock option program for senior officials, administration officials said, confirming the newspaper reports based on filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Village Voice: Nation: Mondo Washington: George Bush, Failed Corporate Crook by James Ridgeway


President George Bush says he's outraged at the scams that have sent big-name companies crashing, and he's not going to take it anymore. Feeding the polls, Bush tells the nation he wants new laws to bring criminal charges against dirty-dealing CEOs who fake company books and destroy not only the public's trust but its savings as well.

In common parlance, what these execs are doing is called fraud, and common knowledge says Bush already has the power to do something about it. Yet again, the president is ducking a tough issue in favor of a PR operation. The problem for Bush is how to seem to be attacking corporate scoundrels while keeping their campaign contributions coming. This is, after all, an election year, and the GOP badly wants to recapture control of the Senate and widen its margin in the House.

If Bush really wanted to address the situation, all he'd have to do is to pick up the phone, call Attorney General John Ashcroft, and ask him to launch an investigation of any one of these CEOs for fraud, conspiracy, theft, obstruction of justice, or perjury. The president could also turn to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which can refer a civil case for criminal prosecution. Bush doesn't need additional legislation to do this. All he has to do is call. He refused to do that in the Enron case, even though his administration knew about the scandal months before the company went public with its bankruptcy. And he hasn't done it with any of the subsequent double-dealings.

Perhaps Bush's inaction stems from his own history of stumbling in the corporate back alleys. Last week, the media revived a case from the early '90s, where it looks like Bush was involved in insider trading with the stock of an oil company of which he was an official. He dumped the shares shortly before the firm tanked, then failed to report his activity to the Securities and Exchange Commission for months. The ensuing investigation, handled by an agency whose director was a Bush appointee and whose general counsel was Bush the younger's own former attorney, was dropped.

Though Bush has shown he can play the game, too, he's not quite ready for the majors. The big difference between him and a guy like Kenneth Lay is that Lay at least was successful. Before he left the world of commerce for a life in politics, Bush lost money time and again. "It was dreadful," one investor told The Wall Street Journal. "I think we got [back] maybe 20 cents on the dollar," said another.

The hapless Shrub took shelter under his family tree. Nowhere is this blue-blood network more evident than in the feeble activities of the president before he became governor of Texas. Consider this chronology, put together largely from research done by the Center for Public Integrity in Washington for its book The Buying of the President 2000.

• 1979-83: Fifty Bush family investors and friends, led by uncle Jonathan, a New York Republican Party official and an investment manager, fork over $4.7 million to set up young Bush in a company called Arbusto. It's a flop, and in 1982 gets a new name: Bush Exploration.

• 1984: Spectrum 7 Corporation, an Ohio oil exploration outfit owned by Dubya's Yalie pal William DeWitt Jr., buys out Bush Exploration, setting up young Bush as CEO at $75,000 a year and giving him 1.1 million shares of the firm's stock. Another flop. The company's fortunes soon sink, with $400,000 in losses and a debt of $3 million.

• 1986: In the nick of time, Bush and partners merge the failing Spectrum with Harken Oil, a Dallas exploration company, with a $2 million stock purchase. Bush puts up about $500,000 and gets a $120,000 annual consulting fee along with $131,250 in stock options. Harken is a small outfit, looking for oil opportunities within the U.S. Then out of the blue comes Harvard Management Corporation, an investment adviser for Harvard University's endowment portfolio. It pumps millions into the venture.

• 1990: Although Harken has no international expertise, it gets the attention of the Bahrain National Oil Company, which unexpectedly appears on the scene and bypasses big oil's Amoco and Chevron to sign a production agreement with the little Texas concern. The contract grants Harken exclusive rights to what seems to be a promising offshore area squeezed between two productive tracts owned by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The Wall Street Journal speculates Bahrain was trying to cozy up to Daddy Bush, who was plotting an assault on Iraq after Saddam Hussein seized Kuwait.

Bass Enterprises Production Company finances the Bahrain drilling with $25 million, and Harvard Management raises its investment. A couple of members of the Fort Worth Bass family have places on Team 100, an elite business group contributing to the Republican National Committee.

In June, Harken drills two dry holes in Bahrain. The future looks bleak. Dubya dumps two-thirds of his Harken holdings (212,140 shares), for $848,560. He uses some of this money to buy into the Texas Rangers baseball club. This is a lot of stock to dump on the market all at once, and brokers say it was purchased by an unnamed institutional investor.

That August, Harken posts a loss of $23 million.

• January 1991: Daddy Bush attacks Iraq.

• February 1991: Dubya, as the official in charge at Harken, reports his big stock sale to the SEC—eight months late.

• April 1991: The SEC begins an investigation into Harken dealings. Chairman Richard Breeden, who had been appointed by the senior Bush and served him as an economic policy adviser, hails from Baker & Botts, a big Texas oil law firm where he was a partner. Inside the SEC, James Doty, general counsel and the official in charge of any litigation that might come out of the Harken investigation, is another alumnus of Baker & Botts. And as a private attorney, before joining the government, Doty represented the younger Bush in matters related to Dubya's ownership of the Rangers.

• 1993: The SEC ends its Harken investigation following perfunctory interviews.

The good people of Baker & Botts continued looking out for Shrub. Since 1993, Breeden, Doty, and other lawyers there have given him $182,050 for his various political campaigns, making the firm one of his biggest supporters.

That's how the network functioned in the Harken affair. Dubya also has historic mentors among his kin. During the Second World War, for example, the government investigated his grandfather, Prescott Bush, and his maternal great-grandfather, Bert Walker. Under the Trading With the Enemy Act, officials seized Bush stockholdings, charging that "huge sections of Prescott Bush's empire had been operated on behalf of Nazi Germany and had greatly assisted the German war effort."

When it comes to business, the contemporary Bush men have been equally good role models for Dubya. Think about it:

• Dubya brother Neil Bush made the news during the late 1980s because he was a director of Silverado Savings & Loan, which went broke and ended up costing taxpayers about $1 billion. In the Silverado case, federal investigators accused Neil of conflicts of interest, but he was never prosecuted. The Resolution Trust Company, set up to bail out bankrupt S&Ls, brought a civil suit against Bush and other Silverado officers. The case was eventually settled for $26.5 million.

• Prescott Bush Jr., a brother of Bush Senior, was reported in 1989 to have arranged investments in two U.S. firms by an alleged front company for the Japanese mob, a task for which he was allegedly paid $500,000. Prescott denied any knowledge of mob involvement.

• In 1991, Jonathan Bush, the Daddy Bush brother who spearheaded the family effort to get Dubya set up in business, was himself fined $30,000 in Massachusetts and several thousand in Connecticut for violating registration laws governing securities sales. He was barred from securities brokerage with the general public in Massachusetts for one year.

• Then there's George W.'s other brother, Jeb, currently standing for re-election as governor of Florida, who defaulted on a $4.5 million S&L loan in 1988, plunging the thrift over the edge. Jeb and his partners paid but 10 percent back.

With his own personal landscape a minefield of weird business dealings, Bush the younger has to watch his step. For him, leaving a few stones unturned might be a wise choice. Thus does he find himself at once making a show of righteous anger and shielding his wealthy friends. "You need to know that by far the vast majority, by far, of corporate America are above-board," he said, "and doing their job just the way you'd expect them to do."



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Additional reporting: Cassandra Lewis

3D Volume Holographic Optical Data Storage NanoTechnology

TIME.com: They Call Him Crazy -- July 15, 2002


...the entire field of psychiatry will go on trial. This is not a figure of speech: Yoder plans to call experts to testify that "mentally ill" is merely a term we use to describe socially unacceptable people and that any medical field that can hold a man for more than a decade and not improve his life must be a failure. The implication of his case is that the true test of psychiatry is not how it treats Princeton mathematicians with "beautiful minds" but how it treats — or fails to treat — its Rodney Yoders, the difficult, impoverished patients ...

Illuminated Manuscripts and Early Printing

An Inquiry into Blake's Method of Color Printing | Introduction

On Illuminated Manuscripts

Erdman

SAENG/TA, Sport Touring Accessories

Microsoft® Management Console (MMC) is an extensible user interface that provides an environment for running management applications, structured as components, called snap-ins.
MMC snap-ins can be created in any development environment that supports producing COM components. Some of the most common development environments are Microsoft Visual C ® versions 5.0 and 6.0, and Microsoft Visual Basic® version 6.0.

Windows Script Host Basics


Windows Script Host is ideal for non-interactive scripting needs, such as logon scripting, administrative scripting, and machine automation.

Tuesday, July 09, 2002

Foveon - Why X3 is Better To capture the color that other image sensors miss, Foveon X3 image sensors use three layers of photodetectors embedded in silicon. The layers are positioned to take advantage of the fact that silicon absorbs different colors of light at different depths, so one layer records red, another layer records green and the other layer records blue. This means that for every pixel on a Foveon X3 image sensor, there's actually a stack of three photodetectors, forming the first capture system with a full-color image sensor.

Digital Camera Image Quality

by Miles Hecker

MP3.com - Lord Jon Ray

HJC's New CL-12

Bold Bikes : Product Reviews...

Wednesday, July 03, 2002

Iasos - Oasis of Visual Sanctuaries Visual spaces to nurture your soul, recharge your being, and lift your spirit.

Business 2.0 - Magazine Article - The Technology Secrets of Cocaine Inc.


According to former and current DEA, military, and State Department officials, the cartel had assembled a database that contained both the office and residential telephone numbers of U.S. diplomats and agents based in Colombia, along with the entire call log for the phone company in Cali, which was leaked by employees of the utility. The mainframe was loaded with custom-written data-mining software. It cross-referenced the Cali phone exchange's traffic with the phone numbers of American personnel and Colombian intelligence and law enforcement officials. The computer was essentially conducting a perpetual internal mole-hunt of the cartel's organizational chart. "They could correlate phone numbers, personalities, locations -- any way you want to cut it," says the former director of a law enforcement agency. "Santacruz could see if any of his lieutenants were spilling the beans."

ABCNEWS.com : Girl Ordered Gang-Raped in Pakistan A Pakistani tribal council ordered an 18-year-old girl to be gang-raped in order to punish her family after her brother was seen walking with a girl from a higher class tribe, police said Tuesday.
The private Human Rights Commission of Pakistan demanded that all those involved in the rape, which took place June 22 in the village of Meerwala in southern Punjab province, be punished.
Police said the victim's father had filed criminal charges against the four men involved in the case. Police said they picked up eight relatives of the suspects to pressure the perpetrators into surrendering.

Digital Camera Reviews and News: Digital Photography Review: Forums, Glossary, FAQ

Tuesday, July 02, 2002

Viridian Note 00320: Global Civil Society Design Contest Viridian Note 00320: Global Civil Society Design Contest
Key concepts: Viridian design contests, trusted computing, global civil society, Mary Kaldor
Attention Conservation Notice: It's another in our series of Viridian design contests.

Israel News : Jerusalem Post Internet Edition Groups affiliated with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement yesterday called upon all Palestinian organizations, including the Islamic movements, to attack Zionist and American targets everywhere in response to US efforts "to remove the legitimate leadership of the Palestinian people."
Fatah's military wing, al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades, issued a statement yesterday in which it threatened "to strike at Zionist and American interests and installations" in Israel and throughout the world if the United States maintains its opposition to Arafat.
The statement warned US President George W. Bush that it will return to the type of fedayeen operations that prevailed in 1970s if what they called the conspiracy against Arafat continued.

Ananova - Giant aircraft carrier plans unveiled Plans for a £2.9 billion project to design and build two giant military aircraft carriers have been unveiled

MediaGuardian.co.uk | Media | Time lord turns to internet

Doctor Who finds a new medium as BBC experiments with online drama, but corporation warns further projects could be charged to users

Monday, July 01, 2002

Indiana Adventures 


The Register


You have no idea the evil we do on a regular basis.
Or rather, the corporation does. I couldn't even begin to explain it. This is only temporary for me. I try to not involve myself in the evil we create.
I mean, how is it ethically possible to charge one person up to forty (yes, 40) times as much for a service than someone else just because they have some stupid $10/mo calling plan? The worst type of criminals don't carry a gun, they take your money legally.



"TCPA appears designed to maximise the effect, and thus the economic power, of such plays. Given Microsoft's record of competitive strategic plays, I expect that Palladium will support them. So if you control a TCPA-enabled application, then your policy server can enforce your choice of rules about which other applications will be allowed to use the files your code creates. These files can be protected using strong cryptography, with keys controlled by the Fritz chips on everybody's machines. What this means is that a successful TCPA-enabled application will be worth much more money to the software company that controls it, as they can rent out access to their interfaces for whatever the market will bear. So there will be huge pressures on software developers to enable their applications for TCPA; and if Palladium is the first operating system to support TCPA, this will give it a competitive advantage over GNU/Linux and MacOS with the developer community."


Lost the link to this, rats...


Microsoft has just assumed the right to attack your computer and surreptitiously install code of its choosing. You will not be warned; you will not be offered an opportunity examine the download or refuse it. MS will simply connect remotely and install what it will, or install it secretly when you contact them.

This means MS will have administrator privileges on your personal computer. What they feed you may be infected with viruses; it may break your applications, corrupt data files, destroy weeks or months or even years of work, but you'll have no recourse if it does. By downloading this WMP critical security patch, which you must do to operate WMP safely, you'll agree to give Billg deed and title to your personal property and to leave Microsoft immune from legal retaliation if they damage your machine.

The pusillanimity of wrapping what amounts to a digital land-grant into a needed, critical security patch is matched only by the arrogance of assuming that Windows is now such a fundamental linchpin of a human life worth living that no retaliation in the courts or at the retail counters is conceivable. (And that's not to mention 'informal' retaliation by outraged IP warriors, which we fully expect to see.)

We've heard the Billg rubbish about Trustworthy Computing until we're sick to death of the trivial incantation. Ironically, Microsoft has just taken steps to make the Internet immensely more untrustworthy than it already is.

Kylie Minogue



Web site uses any excuse to show Kylie pic





According to Sky News, Kylie is to pose naked for a book and this would be the excuse its Web site is using to show a semi-naked Kylie on its own Web site.

Kylie Minogue has reportedly agreed to pose naked for a book.

Microwave melting of metals

Aerodynamic Bike-Pack System - products - Ventura - accessories for the touring motorcyclist

Edward A. Villarreal. Powered by Blogger.

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