During the December 1 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, commentator and author Christopher Hitchens -- a frequent critic of the Clintons -- again claimed that in 2000, Hillary Clinton "got" her husband "to change his plan to visit India and to build in a visit to Pakistan on the way in return for" thousands of dollars she received from a fundraiser held by a Pakistani-American PAC. Hitchens cited no source for his assertion, and reporting at the time said there was "no evidence" to support such a claim. Hitchens made similar claims on the March 29, 2000, edition of the show, as well as in the 2000 edition of his book No One Left to Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family and in a May 1, 2000, column in The Nation. Hitchens made these accusations despite offering no support and despite reporting undermining his claim.

During the December 1 edition of Hardball, after making the accusation, Hitchens added: "Everyone in Pakistan knows she's open for business. This is not a left-right question. It's a matter of integrity." In response, Salon.com senior editor-in-chief Joan Walsh said to Hitchens: "I believe you cherry-picked the worst possible interpretation, as well as facts that aren't necessarily facts, and come up with this analysis."

In a May 1, 2000, column in The Nation titled "The Two Faces of Hillary" (available by subscription), which he quoted at length in the 2000 edition of No One Left to Lie To, Hitchens provided no evidence for the accusation that Hillary Clinton "got" Bill Clinton to go to Pakistan. Hitchens wrote:

General [Pervez] Musharraf's regime has now hired, at a retainer of $22,500 per month, the DC law firm of Patton Boggs, for which Lanny Davis, one of the First Family's chief apologists, toils. Perhaps for reasons having to do with the separation of powers, Patton Boggs also collects $10,000 monthly from Pak-Pac, the Pakistani lobby in America, for Davis's services in its behalf. Suddenly no more Dem jokes about ignorance of Pakistan.

Last December, after Clinton announced that Pakistan would not be on his itinerary when he visited the subcontinent, his former White House "special counsel" arranged a fundraiser in Washington at which lawyers from Patton Boggs made contributions to the First Lady's Senate campaign that now total $25,500. So, not very indirectly, Pakistani military money was washed into her coffers from the very start. Then, in February, another Pak-Pac event, in New York, was brought forward so as to occur before the arrangements for the President's passage to India had been finalized. Having been told that the First Lady did not grace any event for less than $50,000 upfront, the Pakistanis came up with the dough and were handsomely rewarded for their trouble by the presence of Lanny Davis and by a statement from Mrs. Clinton that she hoped her spouse would stop off in Pakistan after all. And a few days later, he announced that, after much cogitation, he would favor General Musharraf with a drop-by.

How does this look to you? One way of deciding it is to try the cover stories for size. "I wish I could say I had the influence and had applied the right pressure for the President to visit Pakistan, but I didn't, so I can't." That's Lanny Davis. Is this what he tells the Pakistanis in return for his large stipend? "If anybody thinks they can influence the President by making a contribution to me, they are dead wrong." That's Hillary Clinton. Is that what she said at the Pak-Pac fundraiser?

One thing that strikes the eye immediately is how cheap this is. And inexpensive, too. The Pakistani nuclear junta must be rubbing its eyes: For such a relatively small outlay of effort it can get the First Family to perform public political somersaults. [emphasis in original]

During his March 29, 2000, appearance on Hardball, Hitchens accused Bill Clinton of "selling U.S. policy on Pakistan to help his wife" and claimed it was a "scandal." Host Chris Matthews responded by asserting that Hillary "grabbed a ton of money from Pakistani-Americans, a huge ethnic group with lots of money and she grabbed all their money and then she said she was not going to encourage her husband to go to Pakistan but all of a sudden he went to Pakistan." Hitchens responded: "No, she said at the dinner I hope he goes to Pakistan."

Contrary to Hitchens' overt accusation on December 1 that Hillary Clinton "got" Bill Clinton to go to Pakistan and his suggested accusations to that effect earlier, The New York Times reported in a March 14, 2000, article that "no evidence has emerged that Hillary Rodham Clinton, who told people at the dinner that she hoped her husband would visit Pakistan, had influenced his decision last week to do so." The Times went on to quote White House spokesperson Mike Hammer as saying, "The first lady's views were not part of the decision-making process." Additionally, the Times noted that "Mr. Clinton has previously indicated his own desire to go to Pakistan."

Additionally, contradicting Hitchens' claim that Davis "organized" the February 2000 New York fundraiser, the Times reported that Davis said "he played no role in arranging the fund-raiser."

As Media Matters for America has documented, in the context of reports that Obama intended to nominate Clinton, Hitchens repeatedly attacked Clinton's foreign policy credentials during appearances on MSNBC:

• On the November 18 edition of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Hitchens suggested that Clinton was not "respected in the Pentagon," despite ample evidence that Clinton "has gained a lot of respect among military leadership" and has "built relationships" with military leaders such as Gen. David H. Petraeus and Adm. William J. Fallon.
• During the November 17 edition of Hardball, as well as the November 18 edition of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Hitchens revived his accusation, which he has yet to source, that Hillary Clinton blocked any action by the Clinton administration in war-torn Bosnia in 1993 because she didn't want it to interfere with passage of her health-care plan.

From the December 1 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews:

MATTHEWS: OK, Joan, let me try to ask you to climb through that rubble. That's very complicated. What do you think --

HITCHENS: Rubble?

MATTHEWS: -- of this appointment? It's complicated, Christopher, because you make the point that this administration's policy hasn't been to the right of what Barack Obama is promising for his administration, which most people would disagree with your view and accept mine -- that it is to the left of what we've had for eight years now.

HITCHENS: Listen, is it left or right for Hillary Clinton to get her husband, after a huge Pakistani fundraiser -- I'm speaking about something very important to us right now. A few years ago, a huge Pakistani fundraiser, in New York, organized for her by Lanny Davis, she got Clinton to change his plan to visit India and to build in a visit to Pakistan on the way in return for a huge campaign donation. Everyone in Pakistan knows she's open for business. This is not a left-right question. It's a matter of integrity.

WALSH: I think this is ridiculous. I think --

HITCHENS: Do we want such a person as secretary of state?

WALSH: Christopher, your views on the Clintons --

MATTHEWS: Joan, your turn.

WALSH: Christopher, your views on the Clintons' integrity are well-known. I consider them eccentric. I believe that you cherry-picked --

HITCHENS: Getting --

WALSH: I'm not -- I'm not going to say that they are perfect, but I believe you cherry-picked the worst possible interpretation, as well as facts that aren't necessarily facts, and come up with this analysis.

HITCHENS: Name one. Name one.

WALSH: I think this is a terrific --

HITCHENS: Name one.

WALSH: I think this is a terrific -- I'm stepping -- I'm going to step around the rubble today, Christopher.

HITCHENS: One, one.

From the March 29, 2000, edition of Hardball (retrieved from the Nexis news database):

MATTHEWS: Well, tell me about India and Pakistan and what your thoughts are.

HITCHENS: What about selling U.S. policy on Pakistan to help his wife? It's a scandal. I can't believe [Rudy] Giuliani is being so quiet about it. If he saw --

MATTHEWS: So she went on television -- I know she grabbed a ton of money from Pakistani-Americans, a huge ethnic group with lots of money and she grabbed all their money and then she said she was not going to encourage her husband to go to Pakistan but all of a sudden he went to Pakistan.

HITCHENS: No, she said at the dinner I hope he goes to Pakistan.

MATTHEWS: I hope he goes. But the fact is that it was never an issue.

HITCHENS: Of course, she's lied a lot about it, as she lies about everything. But you notice that Lanny Davis, her former hack and flack, has been hired by the Pakistani military dictatorship. We were all laughing at Bush for being too nice about that general and forgetting his name, remember?

MATTHEWS: Right.

HITCHENS: Now, Lanny Davis, the hack and flack for the Clintons, is hired for 22 grand a month to represent this dictatorship in Washington and New York. We find he arranged another big dinner in D.C. for fundraising and for pressure on the Clintons. It's extraordinary.

MATTHEWS: You mean that guy that was on this show all the time defending Clinton --

HITCHENS: The whole compromise with dictatorship and with a nuclear power to try and help his wretched wife and her wretched campaign in New York.

MATTHEWS: Well, let me ask you --

HITCHENS: Where is the outrage, Christopher?

MATTHEWS: Well, it seems to be present in San Francisco where you are tonight. Let me ask you about this Lanny Davis role. I'm fascinated. Twenty-two thousand dollars a month to represent the dictatorship that overthrew the democratic government in Pakistan and he isn't part of the fundraising campaign, apparently. What's the connection between Hillary -- the fundraising in New York to get her elected to the Senate and the efforts by the Pakistani government to pay for goodwill here in Washington through the good offices of Lanny Davis?

HITCHENS: Yeah, well Mr. Davis says, when he's asked about the dinner he put on in Washington, well, I don't have this kind of influence to change Mr. President Clinton's itinerary. Well, I wonder if that's what he tells the Pakistanis when they hand him the check. Don't give this to me under the impression I can do anything, guys.

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about --

HITCHENS: It's enough to make a cat laugh, isn't it? But I mean it wouldn't be the first time they'd sold off a bit of foreign policy for some domestic moolah.

During the December 2 edition of NBC's Today, when asked about the effect of President Bush's approval ratings on Barack Obama's election as president, Fox News contributor Karl Rove claimed that the "call for change gave Barack Obama the presidency of the United States with 2.1 percent more than Al Gore got." In fact, in 2000, Gore received 48.38 percent of the popular vote, and according to unofficial election results posted on National Public Radio's website, Obama has received 52.7 percent of the popular vote, which is a difference of 4.32 percentage points.

Rove has previously made similar claims to downplay the extent of Obama's victory. During the November 5 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, when asked how responsible Bush was for Obama's victory, Rove responded, "[L]et me put this in a little bit of a frame for you. ... [Obama] got two and a half points better than Al Gore did." Rove added: "So, if this was all about George W. Bush, and -- and you looked at George W. Bush's standing in the polls, and this was all a reaction to him, you'd expect this thing to be a blowout." Rove similarly claimed in his November 6 Wall Street Journal column that Obama did "2.5 points better than Al Gore did in 2000. These small changes on the margin meant all the difference between winning and losing."

From the December 2 edition of NBC's Today:

MATT LAUER (co-host): President Bush said in an interview recently that he is sure some of the votes for Barack Obama recently were a repudiation of Republicans, and he said, "I'm sure some people voted for Barack Obama because of me." He's leaving office with -- with dismal approval ratings. What went wrong? This was, this -- you were the architect in many ways --

ROVE: Yeah --

LAUER: -- of this administration. What went wrong?

ROVE: Well, first of all, let's take what went right. What went right is that we were struck on Novemb -- on September 11, and for seven years he has kept our country safe. He has liberated 25 million people in Afghanistan, and 25 million people in Iraq --

LAUER: So you'd think they'd carry him out on their -- on their shoulders.

ROVE: No, well, look -- look, that's not -- that's not the way the system works. At the end of eight years, Republicans or Democrats have had -- when they've had the White House, people tire of it. And he's asked the country to do a lot of tough things. And he's asked -- he's asked -- we've gone through big and bold changes, and the country doesn't like that. And we have some economic difficulties. I would remind you of economic difficulties.

LAUER: But the call for change became -- came long before the meltdown.

ROVE: Well, and I would rememb-- remind you this: The call for change gave Barack Obama the presidency of the United States with 2.1 percent more than Al Gore got in 19 -- in 2000.

From Rove's November 6 Wall Street Journal column:

But we do know President-elect Obama ran better among frequent churchgoers (perhaps getting 10 points more than John Kerry did), independents (perhaps five points more than Kerry and eight points more than Al Gore), Hispanics and white men. He even made special appeals to gun owners and sent his wife to cultivate military families. This allowed him to carry previously red states like Florida, New Mexico and Iowa.

This combination helped Senator Obama run four points better nationally than John Kerry did in 2004 and 2.5 points better than Al Gore did in 2000. These small changes on the margin meant all the difference between winning and losing.

From the November 5 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes:

ALAN COLMES (co-host): How responsible is George W. Bush and what his administration has left us for what happened?

ROVE: Well, look, if you want to look at it that way, let -- and let me put this in a little bit of a frame for you.

Barack Obama got 1.5 percent more of the vote than did George W. Bush. He got four points better than John Kerry. He got two and a half points better than Al Gore did.

So, if this was all about George W. Bush, and -- and you looked at George W. Bush's standing in the polls, and this was all a reaction to him, you'd expect this thing to be a blowout, not something that was essentially a mild improvement over what John Kerry got. I mean look at that. That's four points better.

COLMES: [inaudible] But you add in the House, the Senate, and the number of gains for Democrats there -- does that not also speak to --

ROVE: Well, look, the Republicans have a challenge, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

Ramu Yalamanchi, CEO of Hi5 isn't worried about the recession. "We started in a recession so we know what to do. Plus, recessions make available some great resources."

Hi5, headquartered in San Francisco, is much better known outside of the region, and the US. It is larger than MySpace or Facebook, in 30 countries especially Spanish-speaking such as Mexico, and in developing countries--and it is growing faster than both.

"When we started in 2003, we saw that the US market was getting crowded so we looked at emerging markets, that's how we got popular outside of the US," says Mr Yalamanchi.

Hi5 has great momentum and it is looking for new markets. It thinks that virtual worlds is a potentially large opportunity. Earlier this year Hi5 acquired Pixverse, a small company that makes virtual products for virtual worlds. Gaia Online, for example, makes a lot of money from its virtual world economy.

"Our users like to express themselves creatively and we think that virtual worlds will allow them to do more of that. Also, mobile is very important for us, because in a lot of countries people have mobile phones but they don't have PCs."

Hi5 hopes that virtual worlds and mobile will help it continue growing at a very fast pace. In the first six months of this year comScore reported Hi5 visitors increased 79 per cent to 56.4 million per month from 31.4 million per month.

And although Hi5 is big elsewhere, it is not giving up on the US, it hopes to capitalize on its large Spanish speaking user base. "We think we can do very well among Hispanic users in the US," says Mr Yalamanchi.

Hi5 has also cultivated the application developer community by being a big supporter of the OpenSocial standard. This helps developers easily port their applications across different social network platforms.

Hi5 is a privately held company and has about $20m in cash. Mr Yalamanchi notes that economic downturns make resources less expensive such as office space, and also make it easier to find great software engineers, which will help Hi5 in this next phase of its expansion.

Foremski's Take:

Monetization of social networks continues to be a challenge for all social networks because the environment is different to search advertising. It is especially challenging for Hi5 because of its diverse geographic spread. Advertisers continue buy space on a regional basis rather than on a global scale and that won't change for a good while.

Also, ads on social networks are considered very low quality and they don't have the same conversion rates as on other sites. However, that means that there is an excellent arbitrage opportunity for those advertising agencies that can craft the right type of commercial message. Hi5 is working with various agencies to create interactive ads that engage users. And Hi5 has done well with partners in various local markets.

Hi5 is well positioned for growth. We are still in the early stages of social networks, and this is even truer in developing countries where many people are getting online for the first time, and that's where Hi5 has brand leadership. On the Internet being number 1 means being far ahead of number two, or three, and that's a great advantage for Hi5. Especially in markets that are growing far faster than the US.

Recessions might slow spending, but they don't slow Moore's Law, which means the Internet becomes more accessible every day to millions more people overseas, and that's where Hi5 is strong.

Youtube´s new moral guidelines are suprising. In America people confuse nudity with pornography and it is unfortunate that Youtube is a global site so we all have to live by American standards. In America, as opposed to Europe, nudity is a no no. But then when it gets to violence enything goes. I don´t think much should be censored on Youtube. If it was up to me I would territorialize it not censor it. But if I was forced to censor I would ban graphic violence way ahead of nudity. Seeing people die, people tortured, corpses, real war scenes, shocks me much more than seeing people naked.

Share This

Matt Singley is a business process advisor that focuses on social media and UGC sociology. He authors a blog, Singley’s Blog Thoughts, about new (and sometimes old) technologies that can help organizations get ahead.

Each morning you get an obscenely-sized coffee, open your email and turn on your favorite music to lean into the upcoming workday. You are a part of an ever increasing group that starts their day with music and listens until it’s time to go to sleep. In this exploding market of online streaming audio, two companies are leading the way, fighting for a position at the top and looking to earn your loyalty: Pandora and Last.fm.

From a total traffic perspective the sites appear to be pretty close, with Pandora slightly overtaking Last.fm in the early part of 2008.  A closer look at the data however reveals that within the United States, Pandora is dominating in site traffic by almost double. Why the big difference stateside and elsewhere? Pandora is only offered to customers within the U.S. If you are an international reader, it appears the choice for you is obvious; if not, read on.

It’s All About the Music

Let’s get right down to the music selection. I chose a wild mix of genre and popularity and was happy to see that both services not only recognized each artist but also seemed to really understand the type of music that each represented. Pandora started each channel with a song from the artist I selected, but Last.fm played for over an hour and never included them. I love listening to music while I work, so this part of the test was easy for me…I just listened to a lot of music on each service, all day long.

It wasn’t long before I came up with a sweeping generalization: Last.fm plays more Indie music, Pandora leans toward mainstream. As I continued to listen to each channel, I found myself going back to Pandora more and more. The music that was being selected for me just seemed better, it really seemed to understand what I liked. I think what sealed it for me was the inclusion of “Where Is My Mind?” by the Pixies in my Death Cab station. It just felt right.

Each service builds a custom channel based on artists or songs that you chose, and plays music that they think you will like. From an ease-of-use standpoint Pandora came out of the gate strong, I was signed up and listening to songs in less than a minute. I had to stumble around just a bit longer to get going with Last.fm, although it was still a mostly straightforward process.

A Look Under the Hood

With both Pandora and Last.fm working hard to create custom playlists for you, it’s important to take a quick look at the technology that is driving these two sites.  Last.fm uses a technique called scrobbling to determine which songs rise to the top and which sink.  Scrobbling begins by downloading their software and ranking the songs that you like. With millions of songs being scrobbled every day, this is a great way to crowdsource popularity.

From the Last.fm website:

Millions of songs are scrobbled every day. This data helps Last.fm to organise and recommend music to people; we use it to create personalised radio stations, and a lot more besides.

Pandora selects music based on The Music Genome Project®, which is the work of “a group of musicians and music-loving technologists.” This seems to be more of an artisan effort, with this group listening to and defining the music, as opposed to the crowdsourcing method.  

Since we started back in 2000, we’ve carefully listened to the songs of tens of thousands of different artists - ranging from popular to obscure - and analyzed the musical qualities of each song one attribute at a time. This work continues each and every day as we endeavor to include all the great new stuff coming out of studios, clubs and garages around the world.

So which method of determining what you will like is better? Do millions of ratings on songs create a better experience for the listener, or does a select group of people tediously pouring over individual songs yield better results?  Before getting to the bottom line, I want to take a look at more of the overall experience.

User Interface

Looking at the different UIs of the sites, I was naturally drawn to Pandora. The mostly Flash media player seemed a lot easier to use, and frankly a little sexier than the average looking player offered by the competitor. I was not disappointed with the Pandora interface, as I listened to songs I was able to click through to more information about the artists, album, songs and fans of the music all within the same page. Finding similar information over at Last.fm was certainly possible, but required separate page loads for each category that I wanted to find out about.

In terms of social networking, Last.fm is the clear leader. The media player page is set up like a blog that you can scroll down and leave a “shout” about the track as well as look through what others are saying. Last.fm also does a brilliant job of incorporating events into the play page, such as upcoming concerts and events. Pandora simply doesn’t offer this kind of service.

iPhone Apps

Pandora and Last.fm both have created iPhone apps that are free. Comments can be made about aesthetics and function, but Pandora easily won the battle with response time. The Last.fm app seemed to slow down quite a bit as I loaded channels but I didn’t have this problem with Pandora, which loaded almost instantly every time.

Final Thoughts

Designs will change, apps will get updated and new algorithms will be created, but in the end it’s all about the music. Both services offer great things for their users, but one consistently played tunes that I really like. Since it really is all about the music, I’m picking Pandora as the winner in this head to head battle.

Which do you prefer? Tell us in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockPhoto, bns124

---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

Last.fm and Pandora - Music Discovery Services
Last.fm versus Pandora (Continued)
Rumor: Pandora Adding Videos?
Last.fm Partners with Warner
Podcast With Pandora Founder Tim Westergren
Pandora’s A Social Climber: Major Upgrades Look Like Last.fm, Napster
Pandora Now Free!

I am new to Mac. I have an iMac G4 that I got to test the waters and I love it. I think I am ready to jump in. I am selling the imac and going to get a new one soon, after they are updated. But I also want a macbook pro. 15 or 17 inch model is still in the air, but I am curious how well it runs windows in bootcamp. Is it just like my pc or is it quicker? I just know a lot of video converting software for my pc along with other programs and it might take me a bit to find the stuff I like for mac. Also do the new macs play well with ntfs drives now without third party software? Thanks in advance

First off why does Apple sell the plastic macbook with a 2.1ghz CPU when they made up to a 2.5 i think?

Second, is this a good buy? I either want this or a new Macbook. what is the better buy? http://www.macconnection.com/IPA/Sho...tm?sku=8252915

thanks

from: hilda raja date: Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 7:43 PM subject: The grand Finale of the Congress The grand political Finale-the Congress leaders think that by resigning they will be absolved? No, it is not the individual ministers alone who are responsible for the war on Mumbai. It is not the human failure alone but system failure too. So the babus must be asked to quit because it is their

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/80822?ns=guardianpageName=Environment%3A+%27Super+ants%27+threaten+UK+gardens%2C+scientists+warnch=Environmentc3=guardian.co.ukc4=Wildlife+%28Environment%29%2CEnvironment%2CUK+news%2CGardens+%28Life+and+style%29%2CScience%2CZoologyc5=Environment+Conservation%2CHomes+and+Gardens%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CEthical+Livingc6=James+Randersonc7=2008_12_03c8=1127551c9=articlec10=GUc11=Environmentc12=Wildlifec13=c14=h2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FWildlife" width="1" height="1" //divpAn ant species that forms huge supercolonies and infests gardens and parks is marching rapidly across Europe and will soon invade the UK, according to entomologists who are monitoring its spread./ppThe colonies can swell to 10 or 100 times the size of those of common garden ants and scientists warn that they can cause significant damage to plants. /pp"When I saw this ant for the first time, I simply could not believe there could be so many garden ants in the same lawn," says Prof Jacobus Boomsma at the University of Copenhagen, one of its co-discoverers almost 20 years ago./pp"We reckon it's only a matter of time before [it invades the UK]."/ppThe invasive garden ant or ema href="http://www.antweb.org/description.do?name=neglectusgenus=lasiusrank=speciesproject=macaronesiaants"Lasius neglectus/a/em was first identified in 1990 when it was found infesting an entire neighbourhood in Budapest, Hungary./pp"This ant basically looks like the garden ant that everybody knows, so you don't really become suspicious if you see a few of those crawling around because they are everywhere," he said. It has since become a major pest in central Europe and has spread as far as Jena in Germany, Ghent in Belgium and Warsaw in Poland./ppBoomsma and his team think it is moved around by the horticultural trade because it hides inside plant pots. "That is the most reasonable hypothesis for how these ants get transported because the ants themselves have lost the ability to fly so they are very poor disbursers," he said./ppIn research published today in the journal PLoS One, the team used genetic techniques to work out where the ants originated and what makes them so successful at taking over new regions. One reason is that they are able to form super-colonies. /ppThe ants occupy many interconnected nests with many queens. Because they are related, the ants in these nests do not show territorial aggression. When they reach new locations the parasites that usually keep the ants in check are no longer there, so they are able to expand their colonies rapidly./pp"We found that invasive garden ants developed from species in the Black Sea region that have natural populations with small networks of interconnected nests with many queens that mate underground and don't fly. /pp"It is now becoming clear that rather many ant species share this lifestyle, so it is no surprise that a number of them have become invasive pests with giant super-colonies based on the same principles," said Dr Sylvia Cremer, at the University of Regensburg./ppDr Jes Pedersen, a co-author at the University of Copenhagen, said: "The future will therefore see many more ants become invasive, so it is about time we understand their biology. This study is a major step in that direction."/ppMuch of the damage that the invasive garden ant causes is connected with the herds of aphids that it tends. The ants have a symbiotic relationship with the aphids in which the aphids provide sugary food while the ants provide protection from predators. /ppWith the ants around, aphid populations expand to large numbers causing damage to plants and releasing sticky secretions that create a mess on parked cars. Because the ant colonies are so large they can cause a nuisance by invading homes and spoiling food./ppInvasive ants have caused much more significant damage in other countries. The imported red fire ant, which has a nasty sting, causes $750m (£500m) of damage in the US each year to crops and livestock. The Argentine ant has spread along 6,000km of coastline in southern Europe, exterminating many local insects./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/wildlife"Wildlife/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/gardens"Gardens/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/zoology"Zoology/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/o3WUv1Oe4LJ5LdDrZqSllcEf89k/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/o3WUv1Oe4LJ5LdDrZqSllcEf89k/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

img class=face src=http://planet.ubuntu.com/heads/toponce.png alt= pSo, due to the bad shape of the economy, and the lack of faith from a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor in a href=http://gurulabs.comGuru Labs/a, I was let go from my position as a Linux instructor and guru. As unfortunate as it is, I have to press forward looking for the best job that fits my skill set./p pHowever, the point of this post isn#8217;t to complain about being laid off, or the bad shape of the economy. Rather, while employed, I was given a 120 GB LaCie Rugged hard drive that was called the #8220;gurudisk#8221; (being a #8220;Linux Guru#8221; from #8220;Guru Labs#8221;. Get it?). The gurudisk had everything on it necessary for easing the installation of Linux on computers. Kickstart and AutoYast files were used for automating the install of the instructor machine, while scripts and RPMs were used to automate the configuration and additional software installation of the instructor machine, and DHCP, DNS, TFTP and PXE, along with Kickstart and AutoYast files, were used for automating student machines. Using the gurudisk, I could do a full classroom install, complete with instructor machine and 20 student machines, in under an hour. The gurudisk held RHEL 5, RHEL 5.1, Fedora 6, SLES 10, SUSE Linux 10.1 and Oracle 4.5 disk ISOs and software, as well as RPMs, scripts and config files. It was truly a welcomed companion./p pHowever, all of that can easily fit in 40 GB of space, so what to do with the rest of the 80 GB? Well, most of us began using that space for personal data. Music, videos, scripts, documents and so forth. I#8217;m not one to carry music or movies with me, so that didn#8217;t interest me much. Rather, I wanted the ability to take the gurudisk further with using Ubuntu and Debian. So, I had an #8220;isos#8221; directory on my gurudisk, where I kept more updated ISOs, including RHEL 5.2, Fedora 9 and 10, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, Debian 4.0, openSUSE 11, OpenSolaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and others. At one point, I had an entire Ubuntu repository mirroring 8.04 and 8.10 on the gurudisk. Lastly, if that#8217;s not enough, I had VMWare, KVM, Xen and VirtualBox virtual machines with clean, vanilla installations of a few of the major distributions. I took advantage of my space, and it also came to the welcome approval of many students./p pWhen news came yesterday that I had lost my job, and that I would need to turn in my gurudisk, I wanted to first get my Ubuntu mirror, virtual machines and ISOs off the disk. Then, I wanted to experience, first hand, #8220;shredding#8221; the data on the disk. Thus, we have now reached the topic of this post- GNU shred./p pI had heard from students over and over again that zeroing out the drive using /dev/zero is not sufficient for secure data deletion. I full heartedly disagree, and I#8217;m sure I#8217;ll bring out the emotion of many of you in the comments. Here#8217;s why I think /dev/zero is more than sufficient for secure data destruction:/p ul liOn older dive encoding schemes, mainly RLL and MFM, data was not written in exactly the same spot every time. As such, there was left over charge from the previous write, and expensive data recovery hardware could use math and averages to discover what the data once was. As such, a method known as the #8220;Gutmann Method#8221; became the standard of destroying data. Patters of ones and zeros would be written to the disk, in such a way that maximizing flipping the bits, minimizing the average left over charge. After seven passes, the residual charge would be so minute, that it would be virtually impossible to recover the data. Do 35 passes, and the data is gone for sure./li liDrives today do not use RLL or MFM encoding, and also, the bits are much more close together then they were in days gone by. The data has to be written in exactly the same spot, or data destruction is likely on other data existing on the disk. As such, there is no left over residual charge from rewriting the data. A single pass over existing data removes any existence of that data./li liSupposedly, top secret, mega government, super computers administered my corporations with endless amounts of cash flow can recover data on ATA drives, even after seven passes. However, there has been no academic study, no scientific evidence, no hard cold proof. All we have is hearsay and rumors of people we know claimed to recover the data using these killer machines or algorithms on ATA drives./li /ul pSo, with that in mind, after backing up my data, a single zeroing of the entire drive would be more than sufficient for a couple reasons. First, my bosses and company don#8217;t have the resources, the time and money, or the care to recover any data off of my gurudisk. Second, the data I was deleting wasn#8217;t necessarily personal, as no passwords or private keys or information was stored on the disk. So, even if the data could be recovered, of what use would it be to anyone? Little, if any. Chances are good that the drive will sit on a shelf, unattended and unused, and when it does make it back into commission, it will just be formatted with ext3, files put on, and used as any other drive. So, /dev/zero it is./p pOr not./p pI#8217;m a mathematician at heart. I love math and logic puzzles as well as cryptography and many an algorithm. If I had the time and money, I would finish college, and get a Doctorate in Mathematics. However, that#8217;s a dream that just isn#8217;t realistic at this point in my life, but I still enjoy pulling out my HP49G+, and crunching the numbers. So, the algorithm used in Gutmann#8217;s Method is interesting. More interesting are the pseudo-random number generators used in cryptographic applications. So, I decided to give GNU shred a try, seeing as though it#8217;s part of coreutils, and see what the result is. I ran the following command:/p preshred -v -z /dev/sdc/pre pThis means that GNU shred will make 26 total passes, with the 26th pass being straight zeros to hide the fact that the disk has been shredded. Once finished, I#8217;ll add one final pass as an easter egg to the next person who gets the gurudisk. So, 27 total passes to the disk. What I#8217;m mostly interested in, is the time it will take to finish. From my understanding, it will write pseudo-random numbers to the disk on the first, middle and second-to-last passes, due to passing #8216;-z#8217; to zero the shred. Writing random data to 120 GB of disk is going to take some time. In fact, I timed it, and it took 5 hours and 20 minutes. Which means it will last at least 16 hours to run to completion. But then there is the one and zero pattern writing that will take place in between. I would expect this to go substantially faster than writing random data, and it does- about three times as fast. Three passes can be completed in 5 hours and 20 minutes, give or take, based on the pattern. There are 23 final passes at this rate, which is approximately 41 hours. Add the 16 on top of that, and it#8217;s going to take 58 total hours to complete all 26 passes. That#8217;s almost 2 and a half days! In fact, as I#8217;m writing this, it#8217;s 18:00 the next day, and I#8217;m only on pass 11, writing the pattern #8220;333333#8243; in hexadecimal to the disk. The next pass will be my second random data pass. When I get out of bet tomorrow, I expect to be on pass 18, give or take./p pI figure, even though I#8217;m long past any possible data retrieval, it#8217;s fun to watch. Even more entertaining is the heat emanating off of the disk- it#8217;s fairly warm, which I guess makes sense, as the disks have been going non-stop for almost 24 hours. Would I recommend GNU shred for wiping your data? No. Again, /dev/zero will be more than sufficient, and fast too, at roughly 30 MB per second on a SATA or USB 2.0 disk. Which, by the way, this disk is connected via FireWire 400 (I#8217;m not a fan of the USB speed burst). I#8217;d love to see this run to completion, but I#8217;ll probably cancel it sometime tomorrow morning, install my easter egg, then be on my way to return the disk./p pLong live hacking!/p div class=feedflare a href=http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pthree?a=dqloOimg src=http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pthree?i=dqloO border=0 //a /divimg src=http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/pthree/~4/473095795 height=1 width=1 /

Last we heard from the Farrelly camp, the brothers were cooking up a re-launch of the Three Stooges. Now, in a bit less aggravating news: One of them, Peter Farrelly, is getting into the trend of cooking up a myriad of shorts for one feature -- a la Paris je T'aime. The Hollywood Reporter posts that Farrelly and Charles Wessler are teaming up with Liberty Media to create a comedy-centric mix that could hold as many as 24 shorts.

What names are attached thus far? None, other than Farrelly, who will direct not one, but two shorts. Beyond him, the infamous Brett Ratner, Todd Phillips (Old School), Mike Judge (Office Space), and Blades of Glory directors Josh Gordon and Will Speck are all in talks to write and/or direct. The plan is to score "other actors and directors from across the film world, even some not known for comedy." So far, no city-centric or overriding theme has been given.

Some of the names are good, but some -- *cough* Ratner *cough* -- aren't the first names I'd think of in the world of comedy, which makes me wonder what sort of film they're going for. The plus of the Paris and New York collections is the diversity. So, I can only hope that means we'll get not only stateside names like Tina Fey and Christopher Guest, but also some Guy Maddin, Patrice Leconte, Terry Gilliam, Gurinder Chadha...

Who do you want to see involved?

Filed under: Comedy, Deals, Scripts

Permalink | Email this | Comments

They are sueing a 19 year old girl for pirating 10 songs. But get this, shes hospitalized every week due to her pancreatitis, in need of a islet cell transplant, has a medical bill of over $100,000, and her single mom make less than $9 an hour.


Quote: You want to know the truth? I make $8.25 an hour. She can’t work. This child is very sick. I mean, what am I supposed to do? Quote: I just want them to know that I have to go through enough stress in my life with my sickness and my family, and I don’t think that they should go after people just because they want money for something that’s not even fair to us.

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/47906?ns=guardianpageName=Society%3A+Surgeon+carries+out+amputation+by+textch=Societyc3=The+Guardianc4=Health+%28Society%29%2CMedical+research+%28Science%29%2CMobile+phones+%28Technology%29%2CTechnology%2CCongo+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CUK+news%2CScience%2CSocietyc5=Society+Weekly%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CTechnology+Gadgets%2CHealth+Society%2CCorporate+ITc6=Sam+Jonesc7=2008_12_03c8=1127862c9=articlec10=GUc11=Societyc12=Healthc13=c14=h2=GU%2FSociety%2FHealth" width="1" height="1" //divpA British surgeon volunteering in the Democratic Republic of Congo saved the life of a teenage boy by amputating his shoulder using instructions texted by a colleague in London./ppDavid Nott, 52, a general and vascular surgeon at Chelsea and Westminster hospital, was working with the charity Meacute;decins sans Frontiegrave;res (MSF) in the town of Rutshuru when he came across the badly injured 16-year-old in October./ppThe teenager's left arm had been so badly damaged - either in an accident or as a result of the fighting between Congolese and rebel troops - that it had already had to be amputated. But the flesh and bone that remained had become badly infected and gangrenous./pp"He was dying" said Nott. "He had about two or three days to live."/ppThe doctor realised the boy's best chance of survival was a forequarter amputation which requires the surgeon to remove the collar bone and shoulder blade. The only problem was that it was an operation Nott had never performed. But he remembered that one of his colleagues at home had carried out the procedure./pp"I texted him and he texted back step-by-step instructions," he said./pp"Even then I had to think long and hard about whether it was right to leave a young boy with only one arm in the middle of this fighting./pp"But in the end he would have died without it, so I took a deep breath and followed the instructions to the letter."/ppSuch an operation, if performed in the UK, would require careful planning with every sort of modern medical product on hand if things went wrong./ppBut in Congo Nott had just one pint of blood and an elementary operating theatre./ppDespite the basic conditions, the operation was a success and the teenager made a full recovery./ppMore than 5 million people have been killed in Congo since the early 1990s when the Rwandan genocide spread into what was then Zaire./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/health"Health/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/medicalresearch"Medical research/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/mobilephones"Mobile phones/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/congo"Democratic Republic of the Congo/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/ELmUiroX86miaJP2-MRmEwEdsuE/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/ELmUiroX86miaJP2-MRmEwEdsuE/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

I guess it takes well over half a dozen greatest hits packages to land at “The Definitive”. And while the word does not get bandied about as much as “The Essential” it certainly implies some form of completeness to it. Unfortunately this latest Rod Stewart collection falls short in a few places. Conspicuously missing are entries from his insanely popular “The Great American Songbook” series and a stray hit here and there (”All for Love” was an international number one, wasn’t it). Despite its shortcomings the 2 disc set manages to cohesively get you from rockin’ “Rod the Bod” to the blue eyed soul of his early 90’s material. It occurred to me in listening to the set that I am clearly a fan of 70’s and late 80’s/early 90’s Rod and could live without hearing “Infatuation” ever again. That aside it was like revisiting an old friend listening to hits such as “Maggie May”, “You Wear It Well” and “Tonight’s The Night (Gonna Be Alright)”. Even “Da Ya Think I m Sexy?” got cranked up in the headphones.  The deluxe version of the set includes a DVD featuring 14 videos and more spandex and hairspray than a 1986 Poison concert. Far be it from me to keep all that goodness to myself so here’s two from the set.

Rod Stewart - Da Ya Think I m Sexy? (Video)

Rod Stewart - Tonight’s The Night (Gonna Be Alright) (Video)

Buy The Definitive Rod Stewart: Amazon | iTunes

Links: Official Site | on Last.fm | on MySpace

On the December 2 edition of Fox News' The Live Desk, co-host Trace Gallagher repeated the falsehood that the average union autoworker earns $73 an hour in wages and benefits. Gallagher asked Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI): "[I]s it tough to justify to your constituents when you have the hourly compensation and wage of the Big Three at around $73 and you have the hourly compensation and wage for the average American at $28? I mean, it's a big disparity to ask those making 28 bucks in wages and benefits to pay for those who are making 73 bucks in wages and benefits." In fact, according to General Motors, the $73-an-hour figure is based not only on current workers' hourly wages and benefits, such as health care and retirement, but also retirement and health-care benefits that U.S. automakers are providing for retirees, as Media Matters for America has noted.

Numerous media figures have advanced the falsehood that autoworkers earn $70 or more per hour in wages and benefits, some using it to blame autoworkers for the domestic auto industry's financial straits.

From the December 2 edition of Fox News' The Live Desk with Martha and Trace:

GALLAGHER: Is there a plan B if the Big Three don't get this bailout?

UPTON: Well, not really. In fact, GM, they'll probably say, at the end of the week, if they don't get some type of bridge loan commitment, certainly this month, now that we're in December, we're not sure that they can actually make it into -- very much into next year at all. So, there's really no -- no one's talking about a plan B right now. What we're trying to do is -- Ford now is -- at least they've shared with us a summary of a plan that's going to be going to all the members on the banking committee -- House Finance Committee over here in the House. We'll see what the reaction is among both Republicans and Democrats.

Hearings are going to be later on this week, and you know, hopefully, they're going to be showing that, in fact, there is going to be some belt-tightening and a number of different changes that will justify a bridge loan to get them into the next level of vehicles that Americans want: electric hybrids, other things to decrease our dependence on foreign oil. And if we can show that they can pass the plan, hopefully -- or that the committee reaction is positive -- hopefully, we can get a bill on the House floor -- House and Senate floor, as early as next week.

GALLAGHER: Congressman, when you talk about justif