Greg Conti -- a West Point instructor in computer science and information war -- has taken a long, hard look at the amount of information Internet users explicitly and implicitly disclose to Google and the results, collected in his book Googling Security: How Much Does Google Know About You? are sobering. Conti enumerates all of Google's (often fantastic) services, describes how compelling they are, and then notes what information you disclose when you use them -- even when you only use them inadvertently (say, when you send email to someone with a Gmail account, or when you load a bookmarked Gmap that's been sent to a group of logged-in Google users, thus tying yourself to those users as part of the same group). In slow, methodical steps, Conti builds his case: our complacency, Google's capacity for building compelling services, and the inadequacy of our browsers and other tools in alerting us to potential information disclosure have created a situation where Google ends up in possession of an alarming amount of information about us, our beliefs, our movements, our finances, our health, our employment and our social circles. Conti's explanations are extremely accessible, even when discussing difficult and counter-intuitive subjects like cross-site scripting and cookies. Likewise accessible are his concrete recommendations for staunching the flow of personal information from your computer into Google's records. Finally, Conti does a great job of explaining why people who "have nothing to hide" might still want to keep their information to themselves (the approximate dimensions and characteristics of the body under your clothes aren't a secret -- but you still don't walk around naked in public and you'd resent it if someone forced you to. Private and secret aren't the same thing). I've given the subject of privacy and Internet use a lot of thought, but even so, Conti's book opened my eyes to potential risks I'd never considered. I'd recommend this to anyone who's worried about what's happening to our ability to control the aggregation of our personal data. Googling Security: How Much Does Google Know About You?, Slashdot review...br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=391de14bf062d26cf66349f820391375p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=391de14bf062d26cf66349f820391375p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=391de14bf062d26cf66349f820391375" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

pSome of you may have noticed by now that this site is quite often down. I just wanted to give a brief explanation for this. This site certainly could be more robust, but, at least for the moment, I'm running a development instance of hunchentoot on one of the generally less-well supported SBCL platforms, FreeBSD, and am using things like my hunchentoot-cgi interface and nuclblog which certainly haven't been well tested, and probably aren't used by anyone else either. All this adds up to a lot of moving parts that occasionally fail in less-than-graceful ways./p pIn fact, just today the site crashed because SBCL ended up in LDB. I try to avoid this and try to reset the thing soon after this happens, but occasionally a good chunk of time passes. Until recently, I was seeing very frequent failures in which SBCL would run out of processes and the server would die. It turns out this was caused by hunchentoot-cgi and the way it was calling sb-ext:run-process. By calling sb-ext:run-process with :wait nil, the problem seemed to go away and all was right with the world for a couple of weeks. I'm not sure what's up with the latest failure and will keep on eye things to hopefully minimized the downtime if the server ends up back in LDB again./p pWhy am I using hunchentoot-cgi, you ask? Well, that seemed like the easiest way to use gitweb on my current setup. Hopefully it won't cause to many other problems. Thanks for your patience to this of you who actually might want to access the site./p

DIV ALIGN=CENTERa href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0812/smileyfaceatsunset-2000px-mikesalway.jpg" IMG SRC="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0812/smileyfaceatsunset-900px-mikesalway.jpg" alt="See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available."/a /DIV DIV STYLE="max-width:40em"P P b Smile in the Sky /b br b Credit a href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/lib/about_apod.html#srapply"Copyright/a: /b a href="http://www.mikesalway.com.au/"Mike Salway/a P p b Explanation: /b At sunset, Monday's western sky showed off stunning colors and dramatic clouds reflected in Brisbane Water on the Central Coast of New South Wales, Australia. a href="http://www.mikesalway.com.au/gallery/ displayimage.php?pos=-853"It also featured/a the a href="http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/ 24nov_skyshow.htm"remarkable conjunction/a of the crescent Moon, Venus, and Jupiter forming a twilight smiley face. While the gathering of the two bright planets and Moon a href="http://spaceweather.com/conjunctions/ gallery_01dec08_page2.htm"awed skygazers/a around planet Earth, astronomer Mike Salway reports taking special pains to record a href="http://www.mikesalway.com.au/2008/12/02/ pictures-of-the-smiley-face-conjunction"this gorgeous view/a, braving mosquitos and rain squalls along a soggy shore. His a href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap081129.html"southern hemisphere/a perspective finds brilliant Venus at the highest point in the celestial grouping. For now, a bright pairing of Venus and Jupiter continues to dominate the western horizon after sunset but the Moon has moved on and tonight is near its a href="http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/questions/ question3.html"first quarter phase/a. p P script type="text/javascript" digg_url = 'http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap081205.html'; digg_skin = 'compact'; /script script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"/script /DIV

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/49712?ns=guardianpageName=UK+news%3A+They+drugged+her%2C+hid+her%2C+then+waited+to+claim+%26pound%3B50%2C000+rewardch=UK+newsc3=The+Guardianc4=Shannon+Matthews+kidnap+%28News%29%2CCrime+-+UK+%28News%29%2CUK+newsc5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+usefulc6=Martin+Wainwrightc7=2008_12_05c8=1129198c9=articlec10=GUc11=UK+newsc12=Shannon+Matthews+kidnapc13=c14=h2=GU%2FUK+news%2FShannon+Matthews+kidnap" width="1" height="1" //divpThe mother of Shannon Matthews was told she faced a substantial jail term yesterday after she was found guilty of kidnapping her daughter, holding her drugged in a relative's flat, then calling police and making a series of tearful TV appeals./ppKaren Matthews, 33, will be sentenced after Christmas with her co-defendant, Michael Donovan, 40, who was found hiding with the nine-year-old in his flat 24 days after she failed to return from a school swimming trip in Dewsbury in February./ppThey triggered a pound;3.2m police hunt, the largest operation by West Yorkshire police since the Yorkshire Ripper inquiry./ppHaving acted out a plan which police believe may have been inspired by the search for Madeleine McCann, both were found guilty at Leeds crown court of kidnap, false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice./ppBefore sending them down, Mr Justice McCombe told both that they faced "substantial custodial sentences". /ppOutside court, neighbours and police condemned the cruelty and waste of resources caused by a scam aimed at stealing pound;50,000 in reward money for finding Shannon. Julie Bushby, chair of the residents and tenants association on the Moorside estate where Matthews lived with her partner, Craig Meehan, said: "She's let us down. The tears she cried when she did those appeals on TV and when she gave evidence in court were crocodile tears. As for Michael Donovan, he's just weird."/ppDetective Superintendent Andy Brennan, who led the investigation, said: "Karen Matthews is pure evil. She started deceiving those closest to her from the very moment that Shannon was kidnapped. /pp"It is difficult to understand what type of mother would subject her own daughter to such a wicked and evil crime. She is a manipulative individual who has demonstrated a remarkable ability to lie. /pp"Michael Donovan is an accomplished liar. Following his arrest and during this trial, he has attempted to portray himself as a weak-willed individual who only acted under duress. We have never accepted this as an accurate reflection of his involvement in Shannon's kidnapping."/ppThe pair will be sentenced after psychiatric and social services reports which are likely to include events before the fake kidnap. The trial heard forensic evidence that Shannon had been given the sedative temazepam and the travel sickness tablets Traveleeze, both used to drug her at Donovan's flat, as early as May 2006 and on at least three occasions prior to the kidnap./ppFor 24 days, the hunt for Shannon Matthews was a repeat of the search for Madeleine McCann. Detectives abandoned murder inquiries to join the team and hundreds of local people took part. /ppThen, to the astonishment of even the hardened murder specialist heading the police inquiry, the woman at the heart of it turned out to be the kidnap's organiser. "Get Karen down here!" yelled Donovan as police dragged him from his flat in Batley Carr, a mile and a half from Shannon's home, after finding the girl hidden under a bed. "We'd got a plan. We're sharing the money - pound;50,000."/ppAt that moment, in Leeds, a mobile beeped for Brennan, who was explaining the lack of progress to members of the police authority. "We've found Shannon," was the message from Detective Constable Paul Kettlewell, one of five officers who broke down Donovan's door./pp"Where's the body?" asked Brennan, a veteran of more than 20 murder inquiries./pp"No, we've found her alive and we're on the way to the station," said Kettlewell./pp"It stopped me in my tracks," says Brennan. "I had to get straight over to Dewsbury to see her physically to reassure myself." He walked into a room where Shannon was playing with some toys, and she smiled and said hello. Brennan recalls: "I smiled back and said hello myself. That was all that needed to be said. We'd rescued a kidnapped, nine-year-old child and police work doesn't get any better."/ppDuring questioning, Karen Matthews and Donovan came up with six contradictory explanations and were branded, respectively, a "consummate liar" and a "pathetic inadequate" by QCs in court./pp"Basically, we've had two prolific liars who are giving wildly different views. Which one do you believe?" says Brennan. "But in the end, they've either got to knock down our evidence or blame one another. Blaming is what they did."/ppDonovan's wild cries as he was bundled into a police van by officers - who found a restraining leash in his flat and a set of "kidnap rules" to keep Shannon quiet - were soon borne out by events. Shannon was offered the chance to see her mother after her rescue, but turned it down. For her part, Karen told the officer who broke the good news to her: "I like the ringtone on your mobile" - then went shopping./ppMatthews was arrested after breaking down during a routine car trip with a police support officer, and babbling that she had asked Donovan, who is Meehan's uncle, to look after Shannon as part of a plot to get away from his nephew, but "everything went wrong"./ppIn court, the prosecuting counsel, Julian Goose QC, made effective use of film clips of Karen Matthews' tearful TV appeals, which he contrasted with evidence from neighbours and police liaison officers of her nonchalance when the media were not watching. In the middle of more than three hours of evidence punctuated by sobs, Matthews was read details of how she laughed and joked with her boyfriend immediately afterwards. It was, said Goose, a cruel charade./ppDonovan's defence, Alan Conrad QC, was equally scathing, urging the jury to draw the obvious lesson from Matthews' style in both the witness box and during the long search for her daughter. After the court had watched a TV appeal where she begged a supposed abductor: "If anyone has got my daughter, my beautiful princess daughter, let her come home", Conrad turned on her. "You can play for the cameras and play for the court, can't you?" he said, to more tears./ppThere were major weaknesses in the prosecution case: no forensic evidence to link Matthews to the flat where Shannon was imprisoned, and police doubted that Donovan had the wit to carry out a kidnap. But there was evidence the kidnappers desired a reward./ppDonovan spoke of planning to release Shannon and then "find" her in Dewsbury market, and a copy of the Sun with the reward money edging up to pound;50,000 was carefully folded in his flat./pp"I believe that they were going to hold out until they got to pound;50,000," says Brennan. "And though there's no direct evidence that this case mirrored the McCann one, you can see the possibility. Madeleine was still fresh in everyone's minds. A young, pretty girl was being looked for in Portugal, and Shannon was a photogenic girl missing here in Dewsbury. You can see why two and two was put together."/ppDonovan evaded the police search for three weeks because of his web of aliases. It was an extended family member who alerted the inquiry team, after Donovan rang him to ask if he had been interviewed by detectives. "Yes," he said. "Well don't put them on to me," said Donovan. The man rang the police who were, naturally, instantly suspicious./pp"We'd just got Donovan on our list, at 18th in the tally of suspects, some of whom were family members but the vast majority not," says Brennan. "We'd have called on him in the next few days but after that call, he became Friday's priority. Friday was March 14, the day that Shannon was found."/ppIn court, Karen Matthews sprayed allegations at her family, particularly Meehan's relations, suggesting that they were the real plotters. She was just the chosen fall-guy, she claimed, because unlike most of them she had no criminal record and "would get off lightly" if the scam failed./ppBrennan doesn't hide his scepticism, but says: "If any evidence comes to light suggesting others are involved, we will pursue it. If we discover anything more, we will deal with it, you can be sure." /ppThe story of Shannon Matthews may not be over yet./ph2Stranger than fiction?/h2pWidespread rumours that an episode of the TV series Shameless might have inspired the kidnap plot were dismissed by the head of the police inquiry, Det Supt Andy Brennan. "I'd have picked up that straight away," he said. "I was born in Gorton in Manchester where Shameless is made." /ppAn episode shown a month before Shannon disappeared involved the fake kidnap of a young boy, Liam Gallagher, in an attempt to claim a pound;500,000 ransom. The child was hidden a few doors away from his home, with a friend of his sister. Links between the programme, which attracted 2.5 million viewers, never came up in evidence either during the trial or in statements to police. Neither did the case of Madeleine McCann, which dominated headlines for months before Shannon disappeared./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/shannon-matthews-kidnap"Shannon Matthews kidnap/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/ukcrime"Crime/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/Iknt4lWZBAakm_U74vLQ6cTJXXI/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/Iknt4lWZBAakm_U74vLQ6cTJXXI/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

Google Reader has just launched a major redesign to its interface, addressing many of the top concerns of users of the popular RSS reader.

In addition to simply looking way more clean and inviting, Google has introduced more collapsible navigation options, a new section for friends, additional feed bundles, and perhaps most welcoming to power users: the option to hide those intimidating unread items counts, which can quickly swell to hundreds or the dreaded “1,000+” when one spends more than a few hours away from the service.

The “hide” options are handled on a per subscription basis, creating a lot of flexibility in terms of deciding how overwhelmed you want to feel inside of Google Reader. When there are new items to see, the links will still be bold, but the number will not show.

One thing that Google has left out of the new design: an option to go back to the old one. While personally I’m a big fan of these changes, it’s somewhat dramatic and will likely draw immediate scorn from some users who don’t like it. You would think Google would’ve learned a lesson from the new iGoogle fiasco, but alas, they’ve just come out guns blazing with the new look and feel, without any prior warning or public beta test.

The Google Reader team has a full explanation of the changes available on their blog.

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New Google Reader for iPhone: Still Neat, Not Very Social
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Mashable Rocks SXSW: Schwag Bag Update
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pFiled under: a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/ps3/" rel="tag"Sony PlayStation 3/a, a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/wii/" rel="tag"Nintendo Wii/a, a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/xbox360/" rel="tag"Microsoft Xbox 360/a, a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/peripherals/" rel="tag"Peripherals/a/pdiv align="center"a href="http://www.oxm.co.uk/article.php?id=7327"img vspace="4" hspace="0" border="0" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2008/12/rb2.drum.new.input.490w.jpg" alt="" /br //a/div Well, well, well. As it turns out, Harmonix hasn't been entirely honest about the unused input on the back of the a href="http://www.joystiq.com/tag/rock-band-2/"emRock Band 2/em/a drum set. Sandwiched between the orange kick pedal and multi-colored cymbal ports (see above), the extra jack was initially explained away as an expansion port for a emsecond/em kick pedal, as corroborated by a review guide sent to a href="http://www.oxm.co.uk/article.php?id=7327"OXM UK/a: "It was stated in prior interviews/demos that this input was a jack for the second kick pedal," begins the explanation, before ending with emthe kicker,/em "which is not the case." emDun-dun-dunnnh./embr / br /The guide continues, teasing that Harmonix "has not revealed the functionality for this input," which will "be announced at a later date, along with further details for double-kick functionality." So ... the port emis/em for a second kick pedal, after all? Along with a ... emwhat?/em Perhaps Harmonix is vying to make good on one of a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2007/01/09/guitar-hero-distortion-pedals-on-the-way/"a/a a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/08/26/rumorong-new-guitar-hero-peripheral-not-a-keyboard/"couple/a shelved emGuitar Hero/em add-ons? You tell us.p style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/04/unused-rock-band-2-drum-port-to-unlock-hidden-feature/"Unused RB2 drum port to unlock hidden feature/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.joystiq.com"Joystiq/a on Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:25:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./pp style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"nbsp;/ppa href=http://www.oxm.co.uk/article.php?id=7327Read/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/04/unused-rock-band-2-drum-port-to-unlock-hidden-feature/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/forward/1391606/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/04/unused-rock-band-2-drum-port-to-unlock-hidden-feature/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/3qVhUJzdgGBMIadZMop8NMPyZCc/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/3qVhUJzdgGBMIadZMop8NMPyZCc/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=29PFMv87"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=29PFMv87" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=yOUa26nH"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=yOUa26nH" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/joystiq/~4/ehOzoU5D3go" height="1" width="1"/

What about Navy?

The Navy Chief Admiral Suresh Mehta has launched a war against the media. Heavens knows that Indian media sucks and Barkha Dutt is the one of the worst example of hyper-ventilating dumb journalists this country has seen. But, even then, Admira Mehta’s comments–blaming everyone but himself and his force–are a classic example of passing the buck.

Let’s see what Navy has done:

a) There is a media war currently on between the intelligence sources and the Navy–both blaming each-other for the attacks. It seems, though,  that the Intelligence did give some sort of warning which Navy either ignored or was too inept to act on it. Admiral Mehta blames it on systematic failure conveniently ignoring his own culpability.

b) According to a report in DNA, the Navy wanted a written request from the Chief Secretary before sending its Marine Commandos (MarCos) for operations. A request from Mumbai Police was not good enough. So, at the time of national emergency, Navy wanted its paperwork to be perfectly in order. Excellent. Please note: NSG was still on its way and there was no other force with similar expertise, training, and weapons as MarCos.

c) While the operations were currently on, J.S Bedi, Western Naval Chief, appeared on television with all the evidence his MARCOS had uncovered. To reiterate, while the operations were still on. While the entire security establishment deserves a kick on their backside for attempting to claim credit while NSG was still fighting the terrorists (Sukarshan thakur suggests in the Telegraph that media was invited to watch Nariman House operation–was this a fucking beauty show?), the Navy took it to another level by parading its MARCOS before the media. As many have pointed out, special forces should not address the media. Worse, they should not reveal operational details. It was pathetic. It was an attempt to explain why they had not been able to hit any terrorist after engaging them thrice. That makes it even more pathetic. If you have failed, go back and learn. Don’t offer explanations and excuses. Admit that you were not good enough. And again, go back and learn.

d) Here is perhaps the most explosive details,

In the end, the Maharashtra chief secretary had to prepare a letter and fax it to the navy. The marine commandos finally reached the hotels some two hours after the terrorists seized them. But they refused to go inside on the plea that they were not trained for such operations. They stayed outside, firing intermittently at the hotels while the terrorists moved around freely inside, killing at will.[link]

I don’t know how true this. I don’t trust the editorial standards of the Indian media. It also directly contradicts what MARCOS claimed about engaging the terrorists.

But if it is true, I cannot think of any other explanation except cowardice. If an unarmed cop refused to fight terrorists, it would be perfectly understandable. Committing suicide benefits know one. But some of the India’s best trained and best armed troops refused to fight terrorists in a moment of national emergency (once again, if it is true) is an inexcusable and unforgivable act of cowardice and dereliction of duty. I hope the media pursues this story to its logical conclusion and we get all the facts. Because Mumbai attack will not be the last time. And those unwilling to fight for India should be stripped of their uniforms; they don’t deserve to wear one.

Will it be too much to expect Admiral Mehta will go back and look at the state of his own forces. If this shameful conduct does not call for a full and impartial enquiry, then what will?

Posted in Public Policy, Views On News      

div class="image"a href="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/big_show.php?/avaxhome/3e/fc/0009fc3e.jpeg" target="_blank"img src="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/3e/fc/0009fc3e_medium.jpeg" id="external_img_654398"//a/divbr/ div class="center"bComplete Idiot's Guide to TITANIC (The Complete Idiot's Guide) by Alpha Team /bbr/ Publisher: Alpha 1998-06 | 330 Pages | ISBN: 0028627121 | HTML | 7.8 MB/divbr/ With the blockbuster successes of James Cameron's Titanic, its best-selling companion book, and the Broadway musical of the same name, it's clear people have an insatiable appetite for all things Titanic. This fascinating work tells newcomers all about the ship-from its inception, to its building, to the media hype surrounding its fatal maiden voyage, to the passengers aboard, to an up-to-date explanation of how it is believed the iceberg crash caused the ship to sink, to the chaos that ensued, to survivors' stories, and more.

Plat'Home, makers of the awesome OpenBlockS MicroServer, had kind words (and an update for readers of the book!) for our Small Form Factor PCs book (by Matthew Weaver and Duane Wessels):

The explanations are detailed and hands-on. Even though it's filled to the brim with shell commands and console output the text is informative and easy to read. There is even a guide how to solder a cable to power the unit from a USB port (no, this is not covered by our warranty).

As the guide was written in 2006, it mentiones that all documentation is only available in Japanese. Even though the author claims it was fun to figure it all out, we want to make your life a little easier.
You don't have to worry about Japanese anymore, everything you need is available in English now: firmware, manuals, FAQ and support.

We're glad that the authors discovered our MicroServer and we wholeheartedly recommend this book. If you have a hacking streak and need a small firewall box to carry everywhere, this is for you!

Plat'Home MicroServer in O'Reilly hardware hacks book

Make Projects: Small Form Factor PCs - (also available as PDF)
Make Projects: Small Form Factor PCs is the only book available that shows you how to build small-form-factor PCs -- from kits and from scratch -- that are more interesting and more personalized than what a full-sized PC can give you. Included in the book are projects for building personal video recorders, versatile wireless access points, digital audio jukeboxes, portable firewalls, and much more. This book shows you how to build eight different systems, from the shoebox-sized Shuttle system down to the stick-of-gum-sized gumstix.

a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/small_form_factor_pcs_boo.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/small_form_factor_pcs_boo.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" / Permalink/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/small_form_factor_pcs_boo.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890#comments" /Comments/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/mods/?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more articles in Mods/a | a href="http://digg.com/submit?url=blog.makezine.com%2Farchive%2F2008%2F12%2Fsmall_form_factor_pcs_boo.htmltitle=Small%20Form%20Factor%20PCs%20book%20mentioned%20on%20Plat%26apos%3BHome%20bodytext=%20Plat%26apos%3BHome%2C%20makers%20of%20the%20awesome%20OpenBlockS%20MicroServer%2C%20had%20kind%20words%20%28and%20an%20update%20for%20readers%20of%20the%20book%21%29%20for%20our%20Small%20Form%20Factor%20PCs%20book%20%28by%20Matthew%20Weaver%20and%20Duane%20Wessels%29%3A%20The%20explanations%20are%20detailed%20and%20hands-on.%20Even%20though...topic=tech_news" /Digg this!/a

On page A HREF="http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/322/5907/1562"1562/A of this week's issue of iScience/i, researchers provide an explanation for why some maternal cells that cross the placenta escape attack by the fetal immune system. The work also suggests a new mechanism for how the human immune system learns to spare the body's own tissues, a tolerance that breaks down in autoimmune diseases.brbrAuthor: Mitch Leslie

Image via Wikipedia

Stacey at GigaOm shot his video. While this video won´t make it to the most watched videos it gives an excellent explanation of why WiFi keeps growing exponentially around the world. In 2006 when Fon was founded there were around 200 million wifi chips made and this year will end with over a billion. And while it doesn´t mention Fon it is gadgets that is making us end the year with over 300,000 Fonspots around the world. It´s paradoxical that Fon started as a WiMax company, failed and was reborn as a WiFi company. WiMax is the perennial future that never happens. WiFi grows and grows.

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An application is available to download : TestApp. It is an application which contains some examples and some unit tests for Jelix (It is usefull for developers who modify jelix). We will take the TestApp example, but the explanations are valid for any application based on jelix

!-- [DocumentBodyStart:4d86c2fa-9a22-4df8-8816-96816072a858] --div class='jive-rendered-content'div class="jive-quote"pmaxkir wrote:/pp style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"nbsp;/ppHello Thibaut, /pp style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"nbsp;/pp  Thanks for trying TeamCity! /pp style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"nbsp;/pp   Personally, I keep database.yml in the SVN repository. But if you don't want to, I suppose you have to write a rake task/pp   which would create one. After that you can mention this task in the Rake runner setup, just before 'tests' task./pp style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"nbsp;/pp   Do not create this file manually, because TeamCity may eventually re-checkout full sources from version control and this/pp   file will be lost./pp style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"nbsp;/pdiv class="jive-quote"p style="padding: 0px; min- "=gt; (hum - how does this quoting feature work ? sorry I'll have to put it here)/pp style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"nbsp;/pp style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"nbsp;/pp style="padding: 0px; min- "make sense - I could generate some continuous-specific database.yml there - thanks for the advice./p/divp   VCS root is exactly subversion repository in your case. Please see a short demo how to setup Rake project with subversion/pp   repository at a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://teamcitydev.blogspot.com/2008/11/most-advanced-continuous-integration.html"The most advanced continuous integration for Ruby on Rails with TeamCity 4.0/a span/span/pp style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"nbsp;/pp  The target checkout directory for the build you can find from full build log, in first lines./pp style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"nbsp;/pp    =gt; Thanks for the link and the explanation - makes perfect sens./pp style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"nbsp;/pp style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"nbsp;/pp  Not sure about problems with Windows installations - please give more details. What do you see when you go to/pp  TeamCity URL?/pp style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"nbsp;/pp=gt; unfortunately it's inside my VM that is very slow to start - I'll grab a screenshot next time I run it./pp style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"nbsp;/pp   Hope this helps,/pp   KIR/pp style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"nbsp;/pp=gt; it helps img height="16px" src="http://www.jetbrains.net/devnet/images/emoticons/happy.gif" width="16px"/ thanks !/pp style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"nbsp;/p/div/div!-- [DocumentBodyEnd:4d86c2fa-9a22-4df8-8816-96816072a858] --

E-commerce juggernaut eBay is under fire because of a holiday giveaway contest gone awry. On Tuesday 25 November, eBay announced its $1 Holiday Doorbusters deals promotion, giving away 100 gifts ranging from jewelry, clothing, digital cameras, GPS devices to a brand-new Chevrolet Corvette for a $1 fixed price on a daily basis.

The only catch is that there’s no announcement on when these items are released or in which category they will be in.

But cheaters came up with a clever way of winning deals on an automated basis by running scripts to continuously bid on items for $1. That way, they’re gaming the system and winning hundreds of auctions before the items are even available to the public. As evidence, angry eBay users point to a number of closed auctions where the visitor counter shows zero users have actually visisted the item’s page before it was won. That way, an electric scooter worth $1,000 was won by a bidder before anyone visited the page last weekend.

Honest eBay users are evidently unhappy with the whole situation, and the eBay Forums reflect that. Meanwhile, bot scripts are being offered on RentACoder for $20 and even free of charge here and there.

The terms and conditions for the contest states:

Sponsor reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to cancel or suspend part or all of this Promotion at any time without notice, if in the Sponsor’s opinion there is any suspected or actual evidence of electronic or non-electronic tampering with any portion of the Promotion, or if virus, bugs, non-authorized human intervention or other causes corrupt or impair the administration, security, fairness or integrity of the Promotion or for any other reason in its sole discretion.

With that in mind, MSNBC reporter Bob Sullivan interviewed a couple of eBay representatives about the issue, and found out that they’re unable to provide a clear explanation of what kind of automation is allowed and what is prohibited, even contradicting themselves about the issue of using automated tools to bid for items during the contest.

So eBay, if you’re reading: do handy programmers have the right to overrun contests by automatically bidding for items without even visiting the listing, or not?

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

You might remember, Touchmods was the first team to bring VoIP to the iPod touch (SIP-VoIP in 1.1.2008) and to the iPhone (Siphon in 2.2008). After appStore was opened, the Siphon author, Samuel applied for the AppStore distribution of this SW. Unfortunately apple always finds some reasons NOT to accept it :[

Acc to the explanation of Samuel, first apple did not have a SIP account to test it with, second times apple did not like the keyboard style of Siphon resembling the iPhone keyboard. Lately, apple refused Siphon the (already third time), because “Siphon allows Voice over IP on cellular network”.

Samuel is saying: “In fact, my idea was to allow you to call in GSM/cellular (normal call, not SIP) even if SIP/VoIP were unavailable.
- Maybe the message is not clear ?
- Maybe this function is not useful ? ..”

So, will the world’s first SIP solution for the apple mobile platform be accepted as last one by apple? Can NOT apple collect all the comments on the SW instead of bringing up new reasons every month? Hopefully this post answers many unanswered questions regarding why Siphon keeps quiet these days.

      

P br DIV ALIGN=CENTERa href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0812/Mond_Venus_comp600.jpg" IMG SRC="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0812/Mond_Venus_comp540a.jpg" alt="See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available."/a /DIV DIV STYLE="max-width:40em"br P b Venus in the Moon /b br b Credit a href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/lib/about_apod.html#srapply"Copyright/a: /b Johannes Schedler (a href="http://panther-observatory.com"Panther Observatory/a) brInset: a href="http://vjac.free.fr/skyshows/"Vincent Jacques/a P p b Explanation: /b On December 1, bright planets Venus and Jupiter gathered near the young crescent Moon, an inspiring a href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap081203.html"celestial scene/a in early evening skies a href="http://spaceweather.com/conjunctions/gallery_01dec08.htm"around the world/a. But from a href="http://www.lunar-occultations.com/iota/planets08/ 1201venus.htm"some locations/a the Moon actually passed in front of Venus, interrupting the tight grouping with a lunar occultation. Captured from Wildon, Austria, a href="http://panther-observatory.com/gallery/moon/doc/ Moon_Venus_01-12-2008.htm"this twilight view/a shows the silvery a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/bronte/ nockholds1.html"evening star/a about five minutes before it a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIYFvVvnhug"slipped behind/a the dark lunar limb and vanished from sight for more than hour. The image is a combination of long and short exposures showing details of the lunar surface illuminated by both faint a href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020419.html"earthshine/a and bright sunlight. In the inset, recorded later in darkened a href="http://vjac.free.fr/skyshows/conjunctions/2008dec01/ index.html"skies over Breil-sur-Roya/a in southeastern France, a dazzling Venus has reappeared below the bright lunar crescent. Of course, Jupiter, at the upper right about 3 degrees from Venus and Moon, is a href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070329.html"sporting moons/a of its own seen as tiny pinpricks of light on either side of the bright planet. p P script type="text/javascript" digg_url = 'http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap081204.html'; digg_skin = 'compact'; /script script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"/script /DIV

pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=482098a2796c7a2300f553e6maxX=389maxY=258" border="0" alt="Eric Schmidt 1.jpg" title="Eric Schmidt 1.jpg" width="389" height="258" /Did Google really walk away from the Yahoo search deal because of the "risk" of litigation, as Google suggested at the time? No. Because of theem certainty/em of it. When Google walked, the Justice Department was three hours away from suing it for violating the Sherman Act:/p p style="padding-left: 30px;"a href="http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdaily/2008/12/hogans-litvack.html"AmLaw: /a"We were going to file the complaint at a certain time during the day," says [Sandy Litvack, the bulldog litigator who the goverment brought in to handle the case]. "We told them we were going to file the complaint at that time of day. Three hours before, they told us they were abandoning the agreement.".../p p style="padding-left: 30px;"strongThe never-filed government complaint would have charged that the agreement violated Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act... /strong"It would have ended up strongalso alleging that Google had a monopoly and that [the advertising pact] would have furthered their monopoly,"/strong Litvack says./p p style="padding-left: 30px;"strongThe complaint would have sought a preliminary injunction to stop the agreement from going forward/strong. "strongThe fact that we filed a lawsuit would not by itself have stopped them," he says. "We would have had to get an injunction from the court, and we would have sought that."/strong/p pAfter Google walked away, the DOJ released a href="http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2008/November/08-at-981.html"a statement /asaying that it had informed the companies it was planning to file suit. The release did not specify how close Google came to getting sued, however, and Google's explanation for why it walked didn't mention the government's explicit intention:/p p style="padding-left: 30px;"a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/google-walks-away-from-yahoo-search-deal"Google counsel David Drummond on November 5: /a[A]fter four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement,strong it's clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement. Pressing ahead risked not only a protracted legal battle/strong but also damage to relationships with valued partners./p pAnd remember who was behind the effort to get regulators to block the deal? That's right: Microsoft. Payback for Google's (currently successful) attempt to break up a possible Microsoft-Yahoo deal./p p style="padding-left: 30px;"a href="http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdaily/2008/12/hogans-litvack.html"AmLaw:/a Litvack acknowledges that a href="http://www.microsoft.com/en/us/default.aspx"Microsoft Corporation/a and other companies lobbied the department to block the agreement, both publicly and and in private meetings. Litvack insists, though, that Microsoft's lobbying had no bearing on his recommended course of action or on the division's ultimate decision./p p(Via a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/28037962/site/14081545?__source=yahoo|headline|quote|text|par=yahoo"Jim Goldman at CNBC/a)/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/J4HjbT9GE42sPVfToFXAKz_tOwM/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/J4HjbT9GE42sPVfToFXAKz_tOwM/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=OJH5NMt9"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=OJH5NMt9" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=vlxSw5LT"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=hCXjojGr"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=80" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=Fb3OwzSo"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=Fb3OwzSo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=5KRPeozg"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=131" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=BUe4EcZR"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=336" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=m3n9gTiV"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=Q7mWJnvP"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=50" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~4/2lV3gDUqP-c" height="1" width="1"/