December 31, 2007 by dinofond.

I am stunned by the following article from the Washington Post. The RIAA is now going after people who make a copy of a song or Album from CD that has been legally purchased onto the owners personal computer. Hello, I have my whole CD library THAT I PURCHASED on my hard drive. I don’t want to have ruin my CD’s by ejecting them and putting them back in my PC screw that! They make CD’s so poorly these days one tiny scratch an it’s worthless. These people are dinosaurs trying to run a business model that doesn’t even exist anymore. Sigh, more marketing weenies!

Mark Fisher states in this article:

“The RIAA’s legal crusade against its customers is a classic example of an old media company clinging to a business model that has collapsed. Four years of a failed strategy has only “created a whole market of people who specifically look to buy independent goods so as not to deal with the big record companies,” Beckerman says. “Every problem they’re trying to solve is worse now than when they started.”

I personally applaud Radiohead and Prince for selling CD’s direct to it’s audience. I also would hope the powers at bay in the radio would wake up and see how badly the RIAA is damaging the whole industry.

-D
———————————-

Download Uproar: Record Industry Goes After Personal Use

By Marc Fisher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 30, 2007

Despite more than 20,000 lawsuits filed against music fans in the years since they started finding free tunes online rather than buying CDs from record companies, the recording industry has utterly failed to halt the decline of the record album or the rise of digital music sharing.

Still, hardly a month goes by without a news release from the industry’s lobby, the Recording Industry Association of America, touting a new wave of letters to college students and others demanding a settlement payment and threatening a legal battle.

Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

The industry’s lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are “unauthorized copies” of copyrighted recordings.

“I couldn’t believe it when I read that,” says Ray Beckerman, a New York lawyer who represents six clients who have been sued by the RIAA. “The basic principle in the law is that you have to distribute actual physical copies to be guilty of violating copyright. But recently, the industry has been going around saying that even a personal copy on your computer is a violation.”

RIAA’s hard-line position seems clear. Its Web site says: “If you make unauthorized copies of copyrighted music recordings, you’re stealing. You’re breaking the law and you could be held legally liable for thousands of dollars in damages.”

They’re not kidding. In October, after a trial in Minnesota — the first time the industry has made its case before a federal jury — Jammie Thomas was ordered to pay $220,000 to the big record companies. That’s $9,250 for each of 24 songs she was accused of sharing online.

Whether customers may copy their CDs onto their computers — an act at the very heart of the digital revolution — has a murky legal foundation, the RIAA argues. The industry’s own Web site says that making a personal copy of a CD that you bought legitimately may not be a legal right, but it “won’t usually raise concerns,” as long as you don’t give away the music or lend it to anyone.

Of course, that’s exactly what millions of people do every day. In a Los Angeles Times poll, 69 percent of teenagers surveyed said they thought it was legal to copy a CD they own and give it to a friend. The RIAA cites a study that found that more than half of current college students download music and movies illegally.

The Howell case was not the first time the industry has argued that making a personal copy from a legally purchased CD is illegal. At the Thomas trial in Minnesota, Sony BMG’s chief of litigation, Jennifer Pariser, testified that “when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song.” Copying a song you bought is “a nice way of saying ’steals just one copy,’ ” she said.

But lawyers for consumers point to a series of court rulings over the last few decades that found no violation of copyright law in the use of VCRs and other devices to time-shift TV programs; that is, to make personal copies for the purpose of making portable a legally obtained recording.

As technologies evolve, old media companies tend not to be the source of the innovation that allows them to survive. Even so, new technologies don’t usually kill off old media: That’s the good news for the recording industry, as for the TV, movie, newspaper and magazine businesses. But for those old media to survive, they must adapt, finding new business models and new, compelling content to offer.

The RIAA’s legal crusade against its customers is a classic example of an old media company clinging to a business model that has collapsed. Four years of a failed strategy has only “created a whole market of people who specifically look to buy independent goods so as not to deal with the big record companies,” Beckerman says. “Every problem they’re trying to solve is worse now than when they started.”

The industry “will continue to bring lawsuits” against those who “ignore years of warnings,” RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy said in a statement. “It’s not our first choice, but it’s a necessary part of the equation. There are consequences for breaking the law.” And, perhaps, for firing up your computer.

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December 31, 2007 by dinofond.

Two things that always struck me as odd with AOL. One was Time Warner purchasing AOL with it’s 30 million Dial up users and it’s over inflated stock price right when DSL was being rolled out to about 40% of the homes in the US. At that time I knew it was a horrible business deal and that AOL’s days of dominance were short lived without a broad band delivery system. Time Warner cable was and is just not sizable enough. The second was AOL’s acquisition of Netscape but never bundling the browser with it’s software, they continued to use M$ internet explorer.

Friday AOL official announced the Death of the Netscape browser and what a shame that appears to be on this side of the computer screen. Apparently AOL has bequeathed the code and brand to the Mozilla foundation from wince it it came. To me this is such a huge waste. For Time Warner to leave it on the back burner for 7 years with just a 5 person team to innovate it is simply bad management by kiss ass marketing weenies who are clueless about open source software.

Yes, marketing weenie is a technical term Geeks do use quite often, believe me dealing with them can be a hilarious source of entertainment. These generally are the types that have no computer experience whatsoever that are appointed as a project manager by a higher up marketing weenie that also has no technology experience whatsoever. While you are working on the project that they head up you are inundated with phone calls from Mr or Mrs marketing weenie because they cant figure out how to send email but don’t want the desktop technicians or the help desk knowing that due to their over inflated ego. Thus they call you.

RIP Netscape, I hope all the marketing weenies that murdered you are unemployed.

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December 31, 2007 by dinofond.

By DALE JEWETT

Suburbanites who haul themselves to work in the city, and haul stuff home from the hardware store, are the target buyers Toyota had in mind as it created the A-BAT hybrid pickup concept. The A-BAT will be one of Toyota’s two unveilings at the Detroit auto show in January.

The A-BAT is smaller than the Toyota Tacoma pickup and has a four-foot bed. But the concept uses tricks such as a sliding roof panel and fold-down mid-gate to be capable of carrying tall loads or the truck manliness standard of the four-by-eight-feet sheet of plywood.

For more storage, there are lockable drawers in the walls of the truck bed and a large drawer that slides out from underneath the truck bed.

The A-BAT rides on a unibody platform, a departure from standard pickup procedure.

Styling is marked by a thick C pillar, and wheels pushed to the corners of the truck’s footprint. The truck’s design comes from Toyota’s Calty studio in California.

The A-Bat’s shape was inspired by the silhouette of the Toyota Prius, Calty Project Creative Director Matt Sterling said in a statement.

Also inspired by the Prius is the concept truck’s powertrain–a four-cylinder gasoline engine mated to Toyota’s hybrid system.

Inside the A-BAT are seats for four. But the rear pair of seats can fold down, or slide into a storage compartment to create extra cargo room. The top surface of the instrument panel is lined with solar power cells to generate electricity for the concept’s portable navigation system.

SPECS
Overall length: 181.3 inches

Overall width: 74.4 inches

Overall height: 64.0 inches

Wheelbase: 112.2 inches

Bed length: 48.0 inches

Bed length with midgate down: 72.0 inches

Bed length with midgate and tailgate down: 96.0 inches

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December 27, 2007 by dinofond.

EDIT: Microsoft has never traded at 200 even at a daily high it it’s company history.
-D
—————————————

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK - Shares of Apple Inc. hit the $200 mark for the first time Wednesday, as investor confidence in the company continued rising near the end of what has been a strong year for the iPod and computer maker.

In afternoon trading, shares rose $1.17 to $199.97. They earlier peaked at $200.

Apple shares have traded between $76.77 and $199.33 in the past year, rising steadily since January as investors anticipated and then cheered the release of the company’s hybrid cellphone, multimedia player and wireless Internet device, the iPhone. The product went on sale at the end of June.

Apple released a refreshed line of iPods during the year, updating its flash-based Nano model to one that can play videos, and introducing a device called the iPod Touch which is much like an iPhone without cellular calling capabilities.

The company also refreshed its notebook computers during the year.

In a telephone interview Wednesday, Caris & Co. analyst Shebly Seyrafi said he wasn’t surprised that Apple hit the $200 mark.

“Apple has a lot of momentum right now,” he said, noting the company is riding several new product cycles.

Seyrafi, who rates the stock “Buy” with a $225 price target, said sales of the iPod Touch and video-enabled Nanos are helping Apple’s margins. Apple’s component costs are benefiting from declines in NAND flash memory prices, he added.

“Looks like their business is strong even though retail sales growth in general appears to be weaker than in prior years,” Seyrafi said.

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December 26, 2007 by dinofond.

This blog gives me such great joy to write. A Hearty congratulations to the guitarist of Queen who has finished his Doctoral Dissertation in astrophysics (in England they call it a Thesis still) at the Imperial College Astrophysics and will defend it to the board of Regents in August.

Congratulations Dr. Brian May =D

Brian May handing in his Thesis

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December 25, 2007 by dinofond.

They say you grow outta loving Rock ‘n’ Roll but it’s such a huge part of me. It feels like music raised me, adopted me, saved my life.
~Nikki Sixx

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December 25, 2007 by dinofond.

By JEFF LEEDS

After an unusual three-year turn in the corporate suite, Jay-Z, the rap superstar, said Monday that he would step down from his post as president of Def Jam Recordings, one of the world’s best-known record labels.

Jay-Z is not revealing his plans after he leaves Def Jam Recordings, but he will continue to record for the record label.

Jay-Z made the announcement with Def Jam’s parent, Universal Music Group, as his employment contract was expiring. Under a separate long-term recording contract with Def Jam, Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, still owes the company one or more albums.

Jay-Z’s exit from the executive role comes after Universal, a division of Vivendi, declined to renew the contract under more lucrative terms he sought, according to people briefed on the talks, who requested anonymity because the negotiations were confidential. Under the deal that is expiring, Universal was to pay Jay-Z in the range of $10 million over the course of the contract, if he hit certain financial targets.

Jay-Z offered no hints at his future plans. “It’s time for me to take on new challenges,” he said in a statement.

But he is already one of music’s most ambitious entrepreneurs, with business interests that include nightclubs, an investment in the New Jersey Nets and a fashion line. His next move is unclear, though there has been speculation that he might strike a deal with the concert giant Live Nation, which has been seeking stakes in artists’ various business lines beyond concerts.

It is not clear whether Universal will fill the job Jay-Z is vacating.

Though Universal pursued Jay-Z as an executive so that he could imbue Def Jam’s then-uncertain rap business with credibility, he leaves with a mixed legacy. Under his leadership, Def Jam released two top-selling albums from Kanye West, the producer turned rapper who first came to Def Jam through Jay-Z’s own imprint, Roc-a-Fella Records.

But elsewhere, Jay-Z’s results have ranged from muddled to lackluster. The rap act Young Jeezy enjoyed a smash debut but a modest follow-up album and sales of rappers like Freeway and Beanie Sigel have been slow.

On the pop side, Jay-Z is credited with discovering the top-selling pop act Rihanna, and as a performer he lent his skills to an array of Universal acts, even rapping on a version of “Rehab,” the best-selling single from Amy Winehouse, the British retro-soul singer.

Jay-Z, one of the best-selling rappers in music history, also found that running the record label releasing his album does not always guarantee success. His 2006 album, “Kingdom Come,” sold about 1.5 million copies, an underwhelming figure for him.

He has said the album was somewhat too “sophisticated” for some fans. But his latest album, “American Gangster,” which was inspired by the Denzel Washington movie of the same name and acclaimed by critics, has also performed modestly so far, selling about 784,000 copies in its first six weeks on sale.

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December 25, 2007 by dinofond.

The Army’s Apple program to bring more Macs into military facilities is being led by Jonathan Broskey, a former Apple employee who says it’s not just that Macs are a less inviting target than Windows; Apple’s version of Unix is inherently more secure than Windows, he says. Some observers, however, are taking issue with that assessment.

By Richard Koman

One of Apple’s major marketing themes is that Macs are less susceptible to viruses, Trojans, and other hacker attacks than Windows PCs. While that argument has yet to hold much sway with enterprise I.T. departments, it is causing the U.S. Army to add some Macs to its networks.

Lt. Col. C.J. Wallington, a division chief in the Army’s office of enterprise information systems, told Forbes that the Army is adding Macs to make its networks harder to hack. Wallington said that making networks more heterogeneous might make it more difficult for attackers to compromise an entire group of computers.

These things don’t just happen overnight. The Army’s CIO, Gen. Steve Boutelle, called for more diverse computer networks back in August 2005. He said the Army should deal with a broader range of vendors to increase competition and harden I.T. defenses. But thus far, the Army has allowed only a trickle of Macs to enter military facilities. The Army buys only about 1,000 Macs during its twice-a-year buying seasons.

Macs ‘Shrug Off’ Attacks

One key barrier — besides Apple’s price premium and the general I.T. resistance to Apple — has been incompatibility with Common Access Cards, a security Relevant Products/Services key card program the military uses heavily. Early in 2008, the Army will adopt software that will allow Macs to use CACs.

The Army is impressed with Apple Xserve servers’ ability to withstand attacks, Wallington said. “Those are some of the most-attacked computers there are. But the attacks used against them are designed for Windows-based machines, so they shrug them off,” he said.

The Army’s Apple program is being led by Jonathan Broskey, a former Apple employee. He says it’s not just that Macs are a less inviting target than Windows; Apple’s version of Unix is inherently more secure than Windows, he says.

But some observers point out that as Macs have become more popular, Apple has had to release increasingly substantial security updates. Apple’s QuickTime was recently shown to suffer from fairly serious security holes. And security company F-Secure has identified over 100 Mac-specific exploits over the last two months.

Macs ‘Behind the Curve’

Broskey, however, maintains that the large number of patches shows the strength of Apple’s reliance on open-source software for its operating system, but that military I.T. will have to be aggressive about deploying the updates. “The Army’s no different from any corporation,” he was quoted by Forbes as saying.

At least one security expert isn’t all that impressed with the Mac as a battle-hardened OS. Charlie Miller of Independent Security Evaluators said Apple had to patch security flaws five times as much as Microsoft Relevant Products/Services. “I love my Macs, but in terms of security, they’re behind the curve, compared to Windows,” Miller told Forbes.

——> Insert

Did this guy just actually say that Apple is behind the security curve? How much did M$ pay him to say that? That is a complete LIE! I don’t mean fabrication I mean LIE!! Look up old Charlie Miller and his bogus company Independent Security Evaluators through any search engine. You will find all these “Independent” people do is attack apple products and they get paid well to do so. Amazingly enough you can’t find a non apple product this so called Independent Security company has worked with.

Charlie, you’re a liar who is payed by M$ the same way the scumbag lobbyist’s are on capitol hill, you’re a liar and a scumbag. I personally challenge you in in public forum to prove that OS X is behind the security curve compared to windows. I will be happy to hack into a windows computer, you choose the flavor of OS. At the same time you hack into an OS X operating system, I choose OS X server. Let’s see who can exploit the machine first. Any time anywhere Mr. Miller you lying scumbag! I bet you made millions on Y2K too.

How many BSD Unix servers are on this planet get hacked into compared to Microsoft servers? I can tell you NONE! To the newbie BSD is the operating system that apple OS X graphic user interface runs on, the Berkley Standard Distribution of Unix. Without an amazing exploit involving a person (operator error aka misconfiguration or firewall mismanagement) it’s very unlikely you can take over a BSD server in less then several days. Charlie Miller, bogus windbag of the year! Like I said you lying chump, anytime anywhere fuktard!

-D

End insert<--------

Miller added that the Army needs a better security strategy than just adding Macs to the mix. He said attackers will just target whichever platform is weaker, which might just be the Macs that are supposedly more secure. “In the story of the three little pigs, did diversifying their defenses help? Not for the pig in the straw house.”

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December 24, 2007 by dinofond.

Here’s what your Government is doing with your tax dollar! Merry Christmas, Peace On Earth, Good Will Toward Men

(lets face it they have all the upper body strength)

-D

$1 Billion Project to Include Images of Irises and Faces

By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer

CLARKSBURG, W. Va. — The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world’s largest computer database of peoples’ physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad.

Digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns are already flowing into FBI systems in a climate-controlled, secure basement here. Next month, the FBI intends to award a 10-year contract that would significantly expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives. And in the coming years, law enforcement authorities around the world will be able to rely on iris patterns, face-shape data, scars and perhaps even the unique ways people walk and talk, to solve crimes and identify criminals and terrorists. The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.

“Bigger. Faster. Better. That’s the bottom line,” said Thomas E. Bush III, assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division, which operates the database from its headquarters in the Appalachian foothills.

The increasing use of biometrics for identification is raising questions about the ability of Americans to avoid unwanted scrutiny. It is drawing criticism from those who worry that people’s bodies will become de facto national identification cards. Critics say that such government initiatives should not proceed without proof that the technology really can pick a criminal out of a crowd.

The use of biometric data is increasing throughout the government. For the past two years, the Defense Department has been storing in a database images of fingerprints, irises and faces of more than 1.5 million Iraqi and Afghan detainees, Iraqi citizens and foreigners who need access to U.S. military bases. The Pentagon also collects DNA samples from some Iraqi detainees, which are stored separately.

The Department of Homeland Security has been using iris scans at some airports to verify the identity of travelers who have passed background checks and who want to move through lines quickly. The department is also looking to apply iris- and face-recognition techniques to other programs. The DHS already has a database of millions of sets of fingerprints, which includes records collected from U.S. and foreign travelers stopped at borders for criminal violations, from U.S. citizens adopting children overseas, and from visa applicants abroad. There could be multiple records of one person’s prints.

“It’s going to be an essential component of tracking,” said Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s enabling the Always On Surveillance Society.”

If successful, the system planned by the FBI, called Next Generation Identification, will collect a wide variety of biometric information in one place for identification and forensic purposes.
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In an underground facility the size of two football fields, a request reaches an FBI server every second from somewhere in the United States or Canada, comparing a set of digital fingerprints against the FBI’s database of 55 million sets of electronic fingerprints. A possible match is made — or ruled out–as many as 100,000 times a day.

Soon, the server at CJIS headquarters will also compare palm prints and, eventually, iris images and face-shape data such as the shape of an earlobe. If all goes as planned, a police officer making a traffic stop or a border agent at an airport could run a 10-fingerprint check on a suspect and within seconds know if the person is on a database of the most wanted criminals and terrorists. An analyst could take palm prints lifted from a crime scene and run them against the expanded database. Intelligence agents could exchange biometric information worldwide.

More than 55 percent of the search requests now are made for background checks on civilians in sensitive positions in the federal government, and jobs that involve children and the elderly, Bush said. Currently those prints are destroyed or returned when the checks are completed. But the FBI is planning a “rap-back” service, under which employers could ask the FBI to keep employees’ fingerprints in the database, subject to state privacy laws, so that if that employees are ever arrested or charged with a crime, the employers would be notified.

Advocates say bringing together information from a wide variety of sources and making it available to multiple agencies increases the chances to catch criminals. The Pentagon has already matched several Iraqi suspects against the FBI’s criminal fingerprint database. The FBI intends to make both criminal and civilian data available to authorized users, officials said. There are 900,000 federal, state and local law enforcement officers who can query the fingerprint database today, they said.

The FBI’s biometric database, which includes criminal history records, communicates with the Terrorist Screening Center’s database of suspects and the National Crime Information Center database, which is the FBI’s master criminal database of felons, fugitives and terrorism suspects.

The FBI is building its system according to standards shared by Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

At the West Virginia University Center for Identification Technology Research (CITeR), 45 minutes north of the FBI’s biometric facility in Clarksburg, researchers are working on capturing images of people’s irises at distances of up to 15 feet, and of faces from as far away as 200 yards. Soon, those researchers will do biometric research for the FBI.

Covert iris- and face-image capture is several years away, but it is of great interest to government agencies.

Think of a Navy ship approaching a foreign vessel, said Bojan Cukic, CITeR’s co-director. “It would help to know before you go on board whether the people on that ship that you can image from a distance, whether they are foreign warfighters, and run them against a database of known or suspected terrorists,” he said.

Skeptics say that such projects are proceeding before there is evidence that they reliably match suspects against a huge database.

In the world’s first large-scale, scientific study on how well face recognition works in a crowd, the German government this year found that the technology, while promising, was not yet effective enough to allow its use by police. The study was conducted from October 2006 through January at a train station in Mainz, Germany, which draws 23,000 passengers daily. The study found that the technology was able to match travelers’ faces against a database of volunteers more than 60 percent of the time during the day, when the lighting was best. But the rate fell to 10 to 20 percent at night.

To achieve those rates, the German police agency said it would tolerate a false positive rate of 0.1 percent, or the erroneous identification of 23 people a day. In real life, those 23 people would be subjected to further screening measures, the report said.

Accuracy improves as techniques are combined, said Kimberly Del Greco, the FBI’s biometric services section chief. The Next Generation database is intended to “fuse” fingerprint, face, iris and palm matching capabilities by 2013, she said.
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To safeguard privacy, audit trails are kept on everyone who has access to a record in the fingerprint database, Del Greco said. People may request copies of their records, and the FBI audits all agencies that have access to the database every three years, she said.

“We have very stringent laws that control who can go in there and to secure the data,” Bush said.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the ability to share data across systems is problematic. “You’re giving the federal government access to an extraordinary amount of information linked to biometric identifiers that is becoming increasingly inaccurate,” he said.

In 2004, the Electronic Privacy Information Center objected to the FBI’s exemption of the National Crime Information Center database from the Privacy Act requirement that records be accurate. The group noted that the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2001 found that information in the system was “not fully reliable” and that files “may be incomplete or inaccurate.” FBI officials justified that exemption by claiming that in law enforcement data collection, “it is impossible to determine in advance what information is accurate, relevant, timely and complete.”

Privacy advocates worry about the ability of people to correct false information. “Unlike say, a credit card number, biometric data is forever,” said Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley technology forecaster. He said he feared that the FBI, whose computer technology record has been marred by expensive failures, could not guarantee the data’s security. “If someone steals and spoofs your iris image, you can’t just get a new eyeball,” Saffo said.

n the future, said CITeR director Lawrence A. Hornak, devices will be able to “recognize us and adapt to us.”

“The long-term goal,” Hornak said, is “ubiquitous use” of biometrics. A traveler may walk down an airport corridor and allow his face and iris images to be captured without ever stepping up to a kiosk and looking into a camera, he said.

“That’s the key,” he said. “You’ve chosen it. You have chosen to say, ‘Yeah, I want this place to recognize me.’ ”

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December 22, 2007 by dinofond.

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December 19, 2007 by dinofond.

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December 19, 2007 by dinofond.

Kelly Hearn
for National Geographic News
December 18, 2007

The bright yellowish-orange “star” poised above the constellation Gemini is actually the planet Mars, and tonight the icy world will make its closest approach to Earth until 2016.

Earth passes Mars every 26 months, overtaking it in an “orbital race” as both bodies go around the sun. (Explore planetary orbits using an interactive solar system.)

“Earth comes close to Mars because our planet is moving faster in its orbit, catching up to and passing Mars,” said Jaymie Mark Matthews, an astronomer at Canada’s University of British Columbia.

Tonight’s passage happens while Mars is in retrograde motion, or appearing to move westward across the night sky.

“Thus, for the three months around closest approach, the yellowish-orange planet will appear to move slowly backward from the constellation Gemini into Taurus,” said Edward Murphy, an astronomer at the University of Virginia.

The exact distance between the two worlds varies during a close encounter, because the planets’ orbits are elliptical.

Murphy calculates that today Earth is roughly 55 million miles (88 million kilometers) apart from Mars, a figure backed by Matthews.

But experts say tonight’s glimpse of the red planet will be nothing compared to the show-stopping passage of August 27, 2003, when a mere 35 million miles (56 million kilometers) stood between the two bodies.

“That was when the red planet came closer than it had ever been since the time Neanderthals walked the Earth,” Matthews said.

Best Views

Though Mars won’t be as close to Earth as it was in 2003, tonight’s viewing might be better for some sky-watchers.

That’s because Mars won’t be as close to the Earth’s horizon as it was four years ago, thanks to the astronomical geometry of this year’s planetary opposition.

Opposition is when Earth is between the sun and a planet, so the planet appears in the opposite side of the sky as the sun. During the Northern Hemisphere’s winter Earth tilts away from the sun and toward Mars.

“That’s a good sign for sky-gazers at latitudes of about 40 to 45 degrees north,” Matthews said.

“For them, Mars will pass almost straight overhead during the night.”

And for those at mid-northern latitudes, Mars will be up all night long, Murphy said.

Mars fans who miss out on tonight’s show will still get a few good weeks of viewing.

“Although tonight is the night of closest approach, the distance between Earth and Mars is changing very slowly,” Matthews said.

“Mars will look good all month and will still be very good until late January.”

People with even the most basic telescopes should be able to see Mars’s bright icy poles and dark features, according to Space.com.

The planet will also be visible with the naked eye, and its opposition means that it appears in full-phase, similar to a full moon.

But Matthews cautioned against unrealistic expectations.

“Ignore email messages saying that Mars will look as big as the full moon in the sky,” he said.

(Read: “‘Mars Spectacular’ E-Mail Hoax Spins On” [August 26, 2005].)

“Even in August 2003, at a telescopic magnification of about a hundred times, Mars would have had the same angular size as the full moon seen with the naked eye.”

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December 16, 2007 by dinofond.

South Korean scientists clone cat that glows red, I would namez him Moto

By Wolfgang Hanson

Cloning is a topic of much debate that has uses for good and uses that aren’t so good. Being able to clone animals with specific disease states could make it easier for researchers to tackle genetic diseases that affect animals and humans alike.

In 2005 the infamous Hwang Woo Suk, South Korean cloning scientist, admitted to falsifying stem cell cloning research. Even when it was later found that Suk had actually made a possibly larger breakthrough than the faked research suggested, the damage was already done and Suk was fired and faces legal ramifications for his falsified work.

Another group of South Korean scientists has cloned cats with a florescent protein gene that makes them glow red in ultra violet light. Similar techniques have been used in everything from roundworms to goldfish to pigs. The procedure used in the cloning process is hoped to be able to help develop treatments for genetic diseases.

The lead scientist on the project, Kong Il-keun from the Gyeongsang National University was able to produce a trio of cats with the altered glowing gene. The cats were born in January and February, two grew to adult and one cat was still born.

The South Korean Ministry of Science and Technology said in a statement, “It marked the first time in the world that cats with [altered fluorescence protein genes] RFP genes have been cloned.”

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December 16, 2007 by dinofond.

One only needs two tools in life: WD-40 to make things go, and duct tape to make them stop.
~ G. Weilacher

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December 15, 2007 by dinofond.

They sound badass!

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December 15, 2007 by dinofond.

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December 15, 2007 by dinofond.

The Republican party is not a party it’s a species
~ Frank Zappa

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December 15, 2007 by dinofond.

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December 15, 2007 by dinofond.

Ozzy, Slash, Dave Kushner and Bill Siddons speak about drug use and sobriety in the music business. I found this fascinating and very real.

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December 15, 2007 by dinofond.

By MIGUEL HELFT

Are you finding what you’re looking for? or……
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SAN FRANCISCO — Google is testing a new Web service intended to become a repository of knowledge from experts on various topics, one that could turn into a competitor to Wikipedia and other sites.

If it attracts a following, the service could accelerate Google’s transformation from a search engine into a company that helps create and publish Web content. Some critics said that shift could compromise Google’s objectivity in presenting search results.

The service, called Knol, which is short for knowledge, would allow people to create Web pages on any topic. It is designed to include features that permit readers to submit comments, rate pages and suggest changes. However, unlike Wikipedia, which allows anyone to edit an entry, only the author of a “knol,” as the pages in the service would be called, would be allowed to edit. Different authors could have competing pages on the same topic.

Google said that a main idea behind the project was to bring attention to authors who have expertise on a particular topic.

“Somehow the Web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors’ names highlighted,” Udi Manber, vice president for engineering at Google, wrote in an announcement of the test Thursday evening on a Google corporate blog. “We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of Web content.”

Mr. Manber said the goal of Knol was to cover all topics, from science to medicine to history, and for the articles to become “the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read.”

That is often the role played by Wikipedia pages, which frequently turn up at or near the top of results presented by Google and other search engines.

“I think Google is looking at the growth of sites like Wikipedia, that aggregate knowledge, and feels it has to play in that space,” said Danny Sullivan, a search expert and editor of the Web site Search Engine Land.

Several other services have taken different approaches in their efforts to become repositories of knowledge on various topics. They include Yahoo Answers, Squidoo, Mahalo and About.com, which is owned by The New York Times Company.

Despite the existence of these services, as well as countless free tools for experts and ordinary people alike to share what they know online, Mr. Manber said Google thought many people who possessed useful knowledge did not publish it “because it is not easy enough to do that.”

Google declined to make Mr. Manber or anyone else available to discuss Knol, saying the project was an experiment that like many Google tests, might never be opened to the public.

While many technology analysts and bloggers noted that Knol appeared to be a direct competitor to Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, that site’s founder, shrugged off the potential challenge.

Mr. Wales said that Google’s service would encourage competing, opinionated articles on any topic, whereas Wikipedia strived for objectivity and had a single article per topic that represented the collective knowledge of its authors.

“I’m looking forward to seeing what it ends up looking like,” Mr. Wales said.

Knol and Wikipedia would be different in other ways. While Wikipedia is a not-for-profit and ad-free endeavor, Knol has a more commercial bent: Authors could choose to have Google place ads on their pages and would get part of the revenue.

“At some point, Google crosses the line, where they are not only a search engine, but also a content provider,” Mr. Sullivan said. Technically speaking, he said, authors, not Google, would create Knol pages. “But it matters how it appears,” he said. “I do a search on Google, I go to some place that Google hosts and I also find Google ads.”

What’s more, Mr. Sullivan said, Google’s goal of making Knol pages easy to find on search engines could conflict with its need to remain unbiased. Google already carries content generated by users in a variety of services, including YouTube, the photo storage site Picasa and Blogger.

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