Wednesday, September 08, 2004
USATODAY.com - Tiny CubeSats carry potential for huge payoffs
USATODAY.com - Tiny CubeSats carry potential for huge payoffs: "In addition to overseas launches, CubeSat builders are looking to develop the capability of boosting their satellites within the United States. A campaign is in progress with all major launch providers to assess possibilities for the future."
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Welcome to NewMP3Technology!:Below, you will find a full list of our products. To insure compatiblity, you may select your model Jukebox from the left menu, and you will find a full list of products which will be compatible with your model."
CueCat Mirror List
CueCat Mirror List: "The CueCat is a barcode scanner passed out with subscriptions to Forbes magazine and the Radio Shack catalog. The idea is that consumers will install the CueCat software and use the scanner to scan in the bar code associated with certain advertisements. Once the bar code is scanned into the computer, the software will direct the user's browser to the product's web page.
Essentially, this is a way of giving the user of the CueCat immediate and up-to-date information on a product the user is interested in. If I am, say, interested in Radio Shack's televisions, I can scan in the bar code associated with the television I am interested in and be immediately directed to that product's web page. Voluntary, targeted marketing: the CueCat is the retailer's dream device.
There is a hidden side to the CueCat however. With every scan of a bar code, the CueCat gives out a unique serial number. When you receive a CueCat at Radio Shack, or from Forbes for that matter, this serial number can be associated with your name, address, phone number, or whatever else Forbes or Radio Shack happens to know about you. This information could be used in other, involuntary marketing campaigns. You could get junk mail or spam from television companies, for instance. The CueCat could not only direct you to the product you are interested in, it could be used for involuntary data mining. "
CueCat Mirror List
CueCat Mirror List: "Please mirror this page. Please. Your rights that are under attack, stand up or loose 'em. The right to express yourself in code (footnote 1: decss ruling). The right to reverse engineer. The right to distribute other's coded expression (footnote 2: decss ruling, linking). The right to fair use of copyrighted material (footnote 3: vis-a-vie the microcode inside the cuecat. See also the _complete_ control over use, and hence the removal of the right to fair use, given to the copyright holder by the digital millennium copyright act through the act's prohibition of decryption.) By participating you are exercising and strengthening these rights, and, incidentally, standing against false advertising."
CueCat Resources
CueCat Resources: "This page was created when Digital Convergence began issuing Cease & Desist Orders to existing websites dedicated to similar efforts as an attempt to mirror existing material and as a future distribution point for the software I'm working toward.
Digital Convergence is free to send me one of their letters, but unless they specify exactly HOW I'm infringing their IP rights it will only be kept as a trophy, and scanned to include in this section."
WSJ.com - So Your Roomba Vacuums ... Does It Also Take Pictures?
WSJ.com - So Your Roomba Vacuums ... Does It Also Take Pictures?: "Sometimes tinkering can make money. Shortly after the MuVo2, a portable music player made by Creative Labs Inc., hit the market for $199 earlier this year, hackers discovered that its core was a miniature disk drive with massive four-gigabyte storage capacity that Hitachi Ltd. was selling separately to digital-camera users and others for $499. Soon, disk drives stripped out of the MuVo were showing up on eBay for around $250. The empty players -- which could be refitted with standard memory chips -- fetch $35 or so."
RollingStone.com
RollingStone.com: "Should George W. Bush win this election, it will give him the distinction of being the first occupant of the White House to have survived naming Dick Cheney to a post in his administration. The Cheney jinx first manifested itself at the presidential level back in 1969, when Richard Nixon appointed him to his first job in the executive branch. It surfaced again in 1975, when Gerald Ford made Cheney his chief of staff and then -- with Cheney's help -- lost the 1976 election. George H.W. Bush, having named Cheney secretary of defense, was defeated for re-election in 1992. The ever-canny Ronald Reagan was the only Republican president since Eisenhower who managed to serve two full terms. He is also the only one not to have appointed Dick Cheney to office.
This pattern of misplaced confidence in Cheney, followed by disastrous results, runs throughout his life -- from his days as a dropout at Yale to the geopolitical chaos he has helped create in Baghdad. Once you get to know his history, the cycle becomes clear: First, Cheney impresses someone rich or powerful, who causes unearned wealth and power to be conferred on him. Then, when things go wrong, he blames others and moves on to a new situation even more advantageous to himself."
Over at Defense, competent intelligence professionals were purged in order to ease the way to war. Douglas Feith, brought in under Rumsfeld to serve as undersecretary of defense for policy, applied an ideological test to his staff: He didn't want competence; he wanted fervor. Col. Pat Lang, a Middle East expert who served under five presidents, Republican and Democratic, in key posts in military intelligence, recalls being considered for a job at the Pentagon. During the job interview, Feith scanned Lang's impressive resume. "I see you speak Arabic," Feith said. When Lang nodded, Feith said, "Too bad," and dismissed him.
The Flapper
The Flapper: "As far as I know, this is the only paper airplane that flaps its wings when it flies.
No motor, no rubberbands. Just a piece of typing paper, a penny and an inch of tape."
KnowledgePlex: Article: Huge Transit-Oriented Development Planned for Austin, Texas
KnowledgePlex: Article: Huge Transit-Oriented Development Planned for Austin, Texas: "LEANDER -- How do you take 2,300 acres of empty Texas plain and grow a nearly $2 billion, pedestrian-friendly residential and commercial utopia?
City leaders say they've found the answer in transit-oriented development and are planning a mixed-use, high-density commercial and residential project around a railhead in northeastern Leander. If a planned Capital Metro commuter rail referendum passes in November, the railhead will become the start of a commuter rail line connecting Leander to downtown Austin.
The project, ultimately expected to have more than 8,000 homes and 30,000 people, will turn a fallow field into a bustling mini-metropolis. Considering that Leander has only about 12,000 residents now, the project will transform part of Williamson County and turn a poster child for sprawl into the northern rim of the New Urbanism trend settling over Central Texas."
nbc5i.com - News - TEA May Lose Out On Federal Funding
nbc5i.com - News - TEA May Lose Out On Federal Funding: "AUSTIN, Texas -- The U.S. Department of Education may withhold as much as $7 million dollars from President George W. Bush's home state.
Federal officials say the Texas Education Agency has failed to tell parents whether schools performed up to standards under the No Child Left Behind Act.
Parents won't be able to request transfers to move their children from poorly performing schools until the information is released, and the funding may be withheld until then.
State education officials said they may not have final results until February.
A TEA official said the school report cards were delayed because federal education officials did not approve the state's plan for assessing progress until the end of July.
Much of the state's plan was scrapped because it didn't meet the law's requirements.
Under Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, schools must demonstrate year-to-year progress. Students at schools that miss performance benchmarks two years in a row are eligible to transfer to a different school.
"
CACTUS, TEXAS
CACTUS, TEXAS: "CACTUS, TEXAS. Cactus is on U.S. Highway 287 near Etter and thirteen miles north of Dumas in northern Moore County. It began as a company town to produce ammunition for World War II. The Cactus Ordnance Works, one of the largest plants in the county, was established there as a government project by the Chemical Construction Company in May 1942. About sixteen sections of land were purchased; the cactus and other prickly plants were cleared, and huge dormitories were hastily erected to house construction workers. After its completion in 1943, the plant began production of ammonium nitrate to be used in explosives. Housing was built for the plant employees, who at one time numbered 6,000, and many of whom lived in trailer houses. With the easing of the emergency after several months, officials of the Chemical Construction Company received orders to close the plant. Operations were suspended, and some of the residential structures were sold as surplus before the Shell Union Oil and Gas Corporation assumed control of the plant in early 1944 and began manufacturing aviation gasoline. This arrangement lasted until August 1946, when the Emergency Export Corporation took over and reconverted the plant to the production of ammonia. This company continued production until August 15, 1948, when Phillips Chemical, a division of Phillips Petroleum Company, assumed management. Phillips had erected another plant near the ordnance works in 1943. The Cactus post office was established in 1948, by which time the local population had decreased to 2,000. In the early 1980s Cactus had a population of 898 and fifteen businesses, including a large beef-packing plant. In 1990 the community's population was 1,529.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: M. D. Minor, The History of Moore County, Stressing Education (M.A. thesis, West Texas State College, 1949). Fred Tarpley, 1001 Texas Place Names (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980).
H. Allen Anderson
Recommended citation:
'CACTUS, TX.' The Handbook of Texas Online.
"
Page Title
Page Title: "The Magnet Web site is dedicated to the 'Magnet' publication. Home to Billy Bunter and Greyfriars School."
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
Beyond3D - Which was nice.
Beyond3D - Which was nice.: "NVIDIA announced the new NV43 based GeForce 6600 and 6600 GT graphics boards nearly a month ago now. NV43 is a native PCI Express chip that's designed to bring the features and capabilities of the high end NV40 (6800) to the mainstream market. In the mainstream market segment, while performance is a key element, so too is cost, hence NVIDIA are saying their aim for retail pricing of 6600 GT is $199."
Common Good: faq
Common Good: faq: "What is Common Good?
Common Good is a bipartisan coalition dedicated to restoring common sense to American law. Our Advisory Board is a virtual who's who of leading Americans from across the political spectrum. Common Good grew out of the work of our founder and Chair, Philip K. Howard, the author of The Death of Common Sense and The Collapse of the Common Good. We are a 501(c)(3) public charity and rely entirely on contributions for support."
Common Good: The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn
Common Good: The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn: "CG board member Diane Ravitch's new book, The Language Police, describes a world gone mad in search of fairness and avoiding bad feelings. Her riveting expose describes the bizarre and often scary world of educational censorship. The 'sensible principle of removing racist and sexist language' has turned into an 'effort to delete whatever might annoy or offend the most agitated imaginations.' Merle Rubin of the Los Angeles Times asks:
What do dinosaurs, mountains, deserts, brave boys, shy girls, men fixing roofs, women baking cookies, elderly people in wheelchairs, athletic African Americans, God, heathens, witches, owls, birthday cake and religious fanatics all have in common? Trick question?
No, all verboten.
Bias and sensitivity guidelines routinely used by educational publishers, test development companies, the states, and scholarly and professional associations 'combine left-wing political correctness and right-wing fundamentalism, a strange stew of discordant influences,' explains Ravitch."
Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters
Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that mattersSlashdot's Politics subsection.
The Underground History of American Education - John Taylor Gatto
The Underground History of American Education - John Taylor Gatto
"The true purpose of schooling, according to Gatto, is to produce an easily manageable workforce to serve employers in a mass-production economy. Actual education is a secondary and even counterproductive result since educated people tend to be more difficult to control." -- Slashdot.
Huge magnet pulls world toward a new source of energy - MIT News Office
Huge magnet pulls world toward a new source of energy - MIT News Office: "A 150-ton magnet developed in part by MIT engineers is pulling the world closer to nuclear fusion as a potential source of energy.
Over the last three years 'we've shown that we can design a magnet of this size and complexity and make it work,' said Joseph V. Minervini, a senior research engineer at MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center and the Department of Nuclear Engineering."
Elizabeth A. Thomson, News Office
September 25, 2002
Monday, September 06, 2004
Sunday, August 22, 2004
Article: Unique moon may partner Sedna?| New Scientist
Article: Unique moon may partner Sedna?| New Scientist: "Now a UK team has shown that if Sedna has a moon, it must be more like a gigantic, extinct comet than a planetary body.
Assuming the moon exists, Chandra Wickramasinghe of Cardiff University in the UK and colleagues calculated its maximum possible reflectivity on the basis that the space telescopes have been unable to see it. 'If there is a moon, it has to be the darkest object in the solar system,' Wickramasinghe says."
Article: DNA technique protects against 'evil' emails?| New Scientist
Article: DNA technique protects against 'evil' emails?| New Scientist: "A technique originally designed to analyse DNA sequences is the latest weapon in the war against spam. An algorithm named Chung-Kwei (after a feng-shui talisman that protects the home against evil spirits) can catch nearly 97 per cent of spam.
Chung-Kwei is based on the Teiresias algorithm, developed by the bioinformatics research group at IBM's Thomas J Watson Research Center in New York, US. Teiresias was designed to search different DNA and amino acid sequences for recurring patterns, which often indicate genetic structures that have an important role."
Saturday, August 21, 2004
Everything Space: Astronomy and Space News, Chat, Forums, Videos
Everything Space: Astronomy and Space News“There are thought to be millions of these WIMPs going through our bodies every second,” Newburg adds. “Because they are weakly interacting, detectors designed to look for them might detect only a few a day. The reason we think these WIMPs exist is that we see the effects of some unknown and unseen mass pulling at the stars of the Milky Way through gravity. Though each WIMP is very small, there are so many of them that their mass accounts for 90% of the mass in our galaxy. It is quite extraordinary to me that we might live in a sea of these barely-detectable particles, and that we scientists see this as the most likely explanation for our observations of the heavens.”
“Because the Earth is much more dense than the Milky Way galaxy, the WIMPs have very little effect on the gravity we feel, and as far as we know our lives are not directly affected by the tiny particles.”
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InformationWeek > Database Mixup > Terror List Ties Up Sen. Kennedy > August 20, 2004
InformationWeek > Database Mixup > Terror List Ties Up Sen. Kennedy > August 20, 2004: "WASHINGTON (AP) -- A top Homeland Security official has apologized to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who was stopped at airports because a name similar to his appeared on the government's no-fly list of terror suspects.
'If they have that kind of difficulty with a member of Congress, how in the world are average Americans, who are getting caught up in this thing, how are they going to be treated fairly and not have their rights abused?' Kennedy asked Homeland Security undersecretary Asa Hutchinson.
The Massachusetts Democrat said he'd been misidentified on the watch list when he tried to board airliners between Washington and Boston. Kennedy said he was stopped five times as he tried to board US Airways shuttles because a name similar to his appeared on a list or his name popped up for additional screening."
Saturday, August 14, 2004
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Universe Today - Armadillo Aerospace Rocket Destroyed
Universe Today - Armadillo Aerospace Rocket Destroyed: "Summary - (Aug 10, 2004) Another X Prize contender's rocket crashed over the weekend. Armadillo Aerospace's lead engineer and funder John Carmack reported that their prototype rocket ran out of fuel on a test flight and crashed shortly after takeoff. The $35,000 hydrogen peroxide-powered 'Black Armadillo' lifted off from the launch pad and then ran out of fuel 180 metres (590 feet) into the air; it crashed into the ground and was completely destroyed. The team hopes to be flying again in September with a completely new vehicle."
T. rex owes its giant size to the ultimate teenage growth spurt
T. rex owes its giant size to the ultimate teenage growth spurt: "For the first time, scientists have determined the lifelong growth pattern for the Tyrannosaurus rex. T. rex reached its massive adult size due to an extraordinary growth spurt that stretched from about 14 to 18 years of age. Furthermore, the surge was followed by about 10 years of little or no growth as an adult, according to a study that will be the cover story of Nature Thursday, Aug. 12, 2004."
Yahoo! News - Caribbean, Florida on alert with two tropical storms on the way
Yahoo! News - Caribbean, Florida on alert with two tropical storms on the way: "MIAMI (AFP) - Two tropical storms raced toward the Caribbean and the US southern coast, forcing the evacuation of oil platforms and widespread hurricane alerts."
Article: First space test for solar sailing?| New Scientist
Article: First space test for solar sailing?| New Scientist: "A delicate material that could let spacecraft reach distant planets by harnessing the Sun's rays has been unfurled successfully in space for the first time.
The Japanese Institute of Space Astronautical Science tested two solar sail deployments launched aboard an S-310 rocket on 9 August. It is the first time a solar sail deployment has ever been tested in space.
By reflecting photons from Sun, the metallic solar sails should theoretically receive momentum in the opposite direction to propel a spacecraft forward. By gliding along, building up ever more speed, spacecraft should be able to reach distant space targets in record time."
RedNova - Your Sky Tonight - Astronomy Information and Education
RedNova - Your Sky Tonight - Astronomy Information and Education: "What Stars are in Your Sky Tonight?" Nice!
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RedNova News: Quantum Entanglement and Deep-Space Propulsion
RedNova News: Quantum Entanglement and Deep-Space Propulsion:
"While quantum entanglement and quantum teleportation experiments have to date been confined to entangled specimens of materials within the same laboratory, there is no theoretical limitation on how great a distance quantum entanglement can operate across. In other words, once two groups of atoms have been entangled, that entanglement would still be in effect were one of the entangled specimens moved to the other side of the earth.or the solar system.
Therefore, were two specimens of cesium (to take one example; other materials would also work) to be entangled on earth, then one of the specimens lofted into space, exciting the earthbound cesium sample to produce ions would result in the space-traveling cesium sample becoming energetically excited and producing ions like its earthbound counterpart."
Hard Stuff: Cooked diamonds don't dent: Science News Online, Feb. 28, 2004
Hard Stuff: Cooked diamonds don't dent: Science News Online, Feb. 28, 2004: "Popping diamonds into a high-pressure oven for a few minutes can render the famously hard minerals even harder, researchers have found. In particular, pressure-cooking a recently developed type of synthetic diamond has yielded the hardest single-crystal diamond material ever tested, claims Russell J. Hemley of the Carnegie Institution of Washington (D.C.). Single-crystal diamond has a consistent geometric order of atoms throughout, making it desirable for uses ranging from jewelry to electronics."
Tuesday, August 10, 2004
Judicial Watch - Because no one is above the law!
Judicial Watch - Because no one is above the law!: "15. DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE DEATH OF RON BROWN - Judicial Watch petitioned the three judge panel which appoints independent counsels to 'reopen' the inquiry of Ron Brown to determine the cause of his death. Pathologists in the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology believe that a bullet hole was found in Brown's head, yet an autopsy was not conducted at the direction of The White House. At the time of his death, Brown was a key witness in Judicial Watch's case against the Commerce Department and a likely defendant in a criminal proceeding."
U.S. Judges Getting Disclosure Data Deleted (washingtonpost.com)
U.S. Judges Getting Disclosure Data Deleted (washingtonpost.com): "Nearly 600 times in recent years, a judicial committee acting in private has stripped information from reports intended to alert the public to conflicts of interest involving federal judges.
The committee decided that the information removed might tend to endanger a particular judge or put his or her financial investments at risk, according to a study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress."
The Big Guys Work For The Carlyle Group
The Big Guys Work For The Carlyle Group: "Are you the sort of person who believes in conspiracies--the Trilateral Commission secretly runs the world, that sort of thing? Well, then, here's a company for you. The Carlyle Group, a Washington, D.C., buyout firm, is one of the nation's largest defense contractors. It has billions of dollars at its disposal and employs a few important people. Maybe you've heard of them: former Secretary of State Jim Baker, former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, and former White House budget director Dick Darman. Wait, we're just getting warmed up. William Kennard, who recently headed the FCC, and Arthur Levitt, who just left the SEC, also work for Carlyle. As do former British Prime Minister John Major and former Philippines President Fidel Ramos. Let's see, are we forgetting anyone? Oh, right, former President George Herbert Walker Bush is on the payroll too.
The firm also has about a dozen investors from Saudi Arabia, including, until recently, the bin Laden family. Yes, those bin Ladens. Is it any wonder that Internet sites with names like paranoiamagazine.com are rife with stories about Carlyle's shadowy, corrupt global network? And it's not just wackos. 'Be careful,' a tech entrepreneur in Silicon Valley wrote in an e-mail when he learned I was doing a story on Carlyle. 'The rabbit hole runs really deep on this one.''
Leaving aside the conspiracies for a moment, what exactly does the Carlyle Group do? Start with the basics: It's one of the world's largest and most powerful private-equity investment firms, meaning it buys and sells privately held companies and divisions of large public companies for big profits. Founded in 1987 (and named after the favorite New York hotel of the firm's first investors, the Mellon family), Carlyle has raised a total of $14 billion from investors in just the past five years--more than any other private-equity firm has attracted in the same period, except the Blackstone Group and CSFB Private Equity. Profits, too, have been pretty terrific. Not counting the standard 20% cut that goes to Carlyle's partners and managing directors, the firm's average annual rate of return has been 36%."
Thursday, August 05, 2004
local6.com - Problem Solvers - Woman Fired For Eating 'Unclean' Meat
local6.com - Problem Solvers - Woman Fired For Eating 'Unclean' Meat: "Lina Morales was hired as an administrative assistant at Rising Star -- a Central Florida telecommunications company with strong Muslim ties, Local 6 News reported.
However, 10 months after being hired by Rising Star, religious differences led to her termination.
Morales, who is Catholic, was warned about eating pizza with meat the Muslim faith considered 'unclean,' Local 6 News reported. She was then fired for eating a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, according to the report."
• Key Players in the Plame Affair
