AT&T memos detail iPhone 3G unbricking tool, crowd planning, more...

A recent series of internal memos from AT&T to its Mobility staffers reveal a variety of preparatory measures ahead of next month's iPhone launch, including the deployment of an iPhone 3G unbricking tool, ongoing 3G network optimizations, regional advertising campaigns, and calls for part time crowd control, inventory runners, and floor coordinators.

iTunes Activation App

Specifically, one memo issued late last week noted that all company owned retail stores would soon see their desktop systems updated with an icon (below) "for the iTunes utility that will be used for ubricking iPhone 3G devices during the activation process." Employees were asked not to use the partial iTunes software until launch day, but were told that they "WILL need this icon for iPhone 3G launch on July 11th!"
The instructions support expectations that, at least in the case of sales at AT&T stores, each iPhone 3G will need to be unboxed and fully activated at the point of sale. In a second memo, the wireless carrier put out a call for additional part time staffers for launch weekend, which listed among the available positions a back office manager / inventory runner whose job would include bringing iPhone 3Gs from the inventory room to retail sales consultants and then helping to unbox them in order "to facilitate unbricking."

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Google and Creator of ‘Family Guy’ Strike a Deal

LOS ANGELES — Google is experimenting with a new method of distributing original material on the Web, and some Hollywood film financiers are betting millions that the company will succeed.

In September, Seth MacFarlane, creator of “Family Guy” on television, will unveil a carefully guarded new project called “Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy.” Unlike “Family Guy,” which is broadcast on Fox, this animation series will appear exclusively on the Internet.

The innovative part involves the distribution plan. Google will syndicate the program using its AdSense advertising system to thousands of Web sites that are predetermined to be gathering spots for Mr. MacFarlane’s target audience, typically young men. Instead of placing a static ad on a Web page, Google will place a “Cavalcade” video clip.

Advertising will be incorporated into the clips in varying ways. In some cases, there will be “preroll” ads, which ask viewers to sit through a TV-style commercial before getting to the video. Some advertisers may opt for a banner to be placed at the bottom of the video clip or a simple “brought to you by” note at the beginning.

Mr. MacFarlane, who will receive a percentage of the ad revenue, has created a stable of new characters to star in the series, which will be served up in 50 two-minute episodes.

In an interview, he described the installments as “animated versions of the one-frame cartoons you might see in The New Yorker, only edgier.”

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Firefox 3 CPU Usages Problem

I installed Firefox 3 on Windows XP SP3 on my dell laptop. The Firefox process CPU usage keeps varying between 2-3% and 6-7%. I was totally surprised by this behavior, how such popular software is having so obvious problem.

His is really a very serious issue. It can drain your laptop battery very quickly. My advice to all the users of this blog is to stay away from Firefox 3 till they release an update to fix the issue. You may think of switching back to Firefox 2 or may be even to internet explorer.

After searching the net to fix the problem I have found the following solution but none of them work in my case. You may try if they can help you.

First options I found is:

One user fixed this problem on my system (Windows XP) by unchecking the two boxes in Tools -> Options -> Security -> “Tell me if…”
He also deleted the urlclassifier3.sqlite file in C:\DoOne more solution state that :

The fix is actually pretty simple and involves changing the state of “browser.cache.memory.enable” in Firefox’s “about:config“.

• Type “about:config” into the FIrefox 3 RC1 location bar and tell it you’ll be careful (you’ll see what I mean).
• When the list of configuration options shows up, type “cache” without the quotes into the search bar as shown above. A list of all entries will appear with the word “cache” in them.
• Change the state of the “browser.cache.memory.enable” entry to “false” by double clicking on the entry itself. Make sure the state has indeed changed to “false”.
• Restart the browser and you’re done.

Kindly do let me know If someone is having a working solution for this problem.

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Think Rogers iPhone plans are unfair? Try living in Sweden

While Canadians have been shortchanged with Rogers iPhone plans there are still some people getting an even worse deal, the Swedes.

In Sweden and the Nordic countries TeliaSonera is selling the iPhone and the plans has turned the Swedish Apple community against Apple and Telia.

So for a 16GB iPhone you might end up spending $4 356 over 2 years if you want unlimited data.

Come on Steve do you really think most Swedes, or even most Swedish Apple fans are willing to pay between $2 405 - 4 356 to get a new Apple phone. I could buy two Macbook Air and a cheap SonyEricsson phone instead.

I will stick with my hacked first generation iPhone for now even though I have waited a LONG time for this moment. Thanks for screwing up this moment for us!

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Can Weeds Help Solve the Climate Crisis?

Ziska, a lanky, sandy-haired weed ecologist with the Agriculture Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, matches a dry sense of humor with tired eyes. The humor is essential to Ziska’s exploration of what global climate change could do to mankind’s relationship with weeds; there are many days, he confesses, when his goal becomes nothing more than not ending up in a fetal position beneath his battleship gray, government-issue desk. Yet he speaks of weeds with admiration as well as apprehension, and even with hope.
It is easy to share the admiration and apprehension when you consider the site that Ziska planted with weeds in downtown Baltimore in the spring of 2002. Tucked in next to the city’s inner harbor, the site is part of a barren expanse of turf rolled out over a reclaimed industrial landscape. This unfertile scrap seems an unlikely choice for growing anything, but Ziska saw in it, ominously perhaps, a model of where the global habitat as a whole is headed.

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5 Ways to Make Your Company Gen Y-Friendly

Facing a potential onslaught of baby boomer retirements and a smaller pool of Generation X employees to replace them, IT managers who want to create or sustain a Best Place to Work environment will need the additional help of another group of professionals: Generation Y. Also known as Millennials, this group consists of nearly 80 million individuals born roughly between 1979 and 1999. They are the workforce of the future.

But what will it take to attract and keep these individuals? Are Generation Y's ideas about what makes a great employer different from those of other generations?

Yes, and no.

In many ways, the Millennial generation wants exactly what professionals from previous generations expect from employers. When polled for a recent study by our company and Yahoo HotJobs, the most senior members of Generation Y - those aged 21 to 28 and beginning their careers - placed salary, benefits and opportunities for professional growth at the top of their lists.

This isn't to say, however, that they are like their predecessors in every way. In terms of their workstyles, professional expectations and career concerns, they show some distinct preferences. Based on their responses to the survey, here are a few suggestions for making your company Gen Y-friendly.

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Another Inventor Of The Internet Wants To Gag It

Lawrence Roberts is just another guy with the title:" Inventor of the Internet" in news articles. According to Wikipedia, he's the father of networking through data packets. And he's turned his attention to everyone's favorite data packet topic: Peer-to-Peer filesharing. He's established a company called Anagran, and says their devices can sort out which file transfers on the tubes are P2P, and -- you guessed it -- can throttle them in favor of other, more "high-priority" traffic.
At Structure 08, he laid out the problem: 5 percent of the Net's users are running P2P transfers taking up 80 percent of its capacity, which is dramatically limiting the available bandwidth available to everyone else. Roberts' company, Anagran, is able to detect which "flows" are P2P traffic, and reduce the bandwidth available to these communications when other users' systems want it. Roberts says that Anagran's technology even functions when P2P transfers are encrypted.

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Taser "Parties" Pitching Them To Women

Dana Shafman throws "Taser parties" to try to sell the weapons to women -- civilian women.

Shafman, 35, from Scottsddale, Ariz., remarked to Early Show co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez at one such party, "There's Tupperware parties ... and there's candle parties, and there's every other party, but there's no party that addresses safety."

The stun-gun-type weapons have proven controversial, even in the hands of law enforcement officers, but Shafman, who heads ShieldHer.net, says it's time they were sold to everyone. "I think," she says, "we rely on others to make us safe, versus actually thinking about how we can make ourselves safer."

Adding yet another layer of controversy is the attractive colors and packaging the Tasers now come in, about which Shafman says, "That's just so that the consumer market is more aware of the product and it's more appealing to them, because there is a level of fear associated with the product, because they've not had any hands-on use with the product, which is why we push the Taser party for the education portion of the product."

Women get to shoot Tasers at targets at the parties.

Rodriguez allowed herself to be on the receiving end and says, "I was surprised. I felt paralyzed almost and incredible pain."

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An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant Sometimes, software isn't so magical. Even for Bill Gates.

For the opening piece in our series on Gates leaving daily life at Microsoft, one goal was to give a clear picture of the Microsoft co-founder's role inside the company, as a gauge of the impact his departure will have. As part of that, I went back through the internal e-mails turned over in the antitrust suits against the company, looking for new insights into his personality.

Read on past the jump for one of the gems that turned up, showing Gates in the role of chief rabble-rouser. (Original document: PDF, 5 pages.) It shows that even the Microsoft co-founder -- who champions the "magic of software" -- isn't immune to the frustrations of everyday computer users. Keep in mind that this was more than five years ago, so it doesn't necessarily reflect the specific state of things now. At the bottom, see what Gates said when I asked him about the message last week.

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Mining for Molecules in the Milky Way

Clouds like this one are the raw material for new stars and planets. We know that complex chemistry builds prebiotic molecules in such clouds long before the stars and planets are formed. There is a good chance that some of these interstellar molecules may find their way to the surface of young planets such as the early Earth, and provide a head start for the chemistry of life. For the first time, we now have the capability to make a very thorough and methodical search to find all the chemicals in the clouds," said Anthony Remijan, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO).

In the past three years, Remijan and his colleagues have used the GBT to discover ten new interstellar molecules, a feat unequalled in such a short time by any other team or telescope.

The scientists discovered those molecules by looking specifically for them. However, they now are changing their strategy and casting a wide net designed to find whatever molecules are present, without knowing in advance what they'll find. In addition, they are making their data available freely to other scientists, in hopes of speeding the discovery process. The research team presented its plan to the American Astronomical Society's meeting in St. Louis, MO.

As molecules rotate and vibrate, they emit radio waves at specific frequencies. Each molecule has a unique pattern of such frequencies, called spectral lines, that constitutes a "fingerprint" identifying that molecule. Laboratory tests can determine the pattern of spectral lines that identifies a specific molecule.

Most past discoveries came from identifying a molecule's pattern in the laboratory, then searching with a radio telescope for that set of spectral lines in a region of sky. So far, more than 140 different molecules have been found that way in interstellar space.

The new study reverses the process. The astronomers will use the GBT to study a cloud of gas and dust in detail, finding all the spectral lines first, then later trying to match them up to molecular patterns using data-mining software.

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Meet the iPod Doctor: He makes house calls

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Ramon Reyes had a problem. He could only get sound from one channel on his iPod video player. At first, he thought his ear-buds were busted. But he replaced them with a pricey new pair made by Sony, and it didn't make any difference.

So on a recent sunny afternoon, Reyes stood outside his office in lower Manhattan, chewing gum, and waiting for a visit from Demetrios Leontaris, better known as the iPod Doctor. Leontaris spends his days cruising Manhattan and tending to the needs of distressed owners of Apple's ubiquitous portable music player.

Leontaris, a heavy-set guy from blue collar Union City, N.J., soon arrived in the black Pontiac Aztek that doubles as his office. He rolled down the window, eyeballed Reyes' iPod, and offered a diagnosis: The headphone input jack was broken. "It's fairly common with this model," the iPod Doctor said reassuringly.

Sitting in the driver's seat of the Aztek, Leontaris opened Reyes' iPod and replaced the damaged part with the swift, graceful movements of a concert pianist. "There you go," he said, returning the refurbished device to its owner.

Reyes put his buds in his ears and gave his iPod a listen. "Excellent," he said, smiling and nodding his head to a beat that only he could hear. The iPod Doctor collected his standard $70 fee for the repair and headed off for another appointment.

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The Thin Laptop Wars

The paperback edition of War & Peace, a bottle of wine, the world's smallest cat--all of these things weigh a good deal more than the Portégé R500-S5007V introduced by Toshiba last week.

The neatest trick: Unlike Apple's (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) 3-pound MacBook Air, the 2.4-pound Toshiba (other-otc: TOSBF.PK - news - people ) includes the optical drive that the MacBook Air lacks while cramming in 128 gigabytes worth of storage, thanks to the world's largest capacity flash memory-based hard drive. All this, and it's just one hundredth of an inch thicker than the Apple.

The catch: Toshiba's new machine won't be available until the third quarter of this year, and even then it will carry a price tag that makes Apple customers look downright thrifty: $2,999.

In Pictures: Seven Thin Laptops

To be sure, a new class of lightweight, cheap laptops is emerging as well. Computers such as the Asus Eee PC 900, the HP Mini-Note 2133 and the Intel Classmate PC sell for well under $500. But they also suffer from cramped keyboards, dinky screens and relatively pokey processors.

If you want it all, and you want it small, then you're going to have to pay a great deal more than $500. While notebook computer prices are falling fast, notebooks that are still able to lighten the load while packing serious computing power command a premium price.

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Drivers Log 30 Billion Fewer Miles in US

Earlier I talked about how March represented a dramatic drop in vehicle miles traveled, but that’s nothing compared to a recent report stating that Americans have cut back 30 billion miles over the last six months. The drop was measured between November 2007 - April 2008, and compared to the same period from a year ago. Overall the drop was only 1%, but compared to an annual increase of 1-2%, the difference from the norm is actually a bit bigger.

The drop is the largest it’s been since the fuel crisis of 1979-1980, and with fuel prices looking to stay high, may represent a permanent change in the way Americans think about travel. Here’s what USA Today has to say about the difference between now and the last fuel crisis (which I wasn’t alive for!):

“It’s not a blip,” said Marilyn Brown, professor of energy policy at Georgia Tech, citing data showing surging transit ridership, dropping sales of sport-utility vehicles and sharply increased demand for gas-efficient vehicles. “I think the difference between now and 1979, when prices were comparable when you adjust for inflation, is there’s a sense of sustained pain. There’s a sense that the era of cheap energy is a thing of the past.”

This comes amid a flurry of TV, magazine, and newspaper stories about people hopping on the bike, moving closer to work, and dumping their gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs at any cost. My experience with change in the US would suggest that the news is exaggerating the reality of the situation, but these new, hard numbers suggest that isn’t the case at all. Even though some aren’t changing their habits at all, enough are doing it to make the largest drop we’ve seen in decades.

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Bangladesh 'losing on corruption'

Corruption in Bangladesh has continued to thrive since the interim government took power last year pledging to tackle it, Transparency International says.

Thousands of people, including leading politicians and businessmen, have been detained in a crackdown on crime.

But the watchdog said that in some sectors of the country corruption had actually increased since January 2007.

One of the survey's authors said corruption remained a deep-rooted menace in Bangladesh.

Bribes

The military-backed government has not been afraid of going after some of the most influential people in Bangladeshi public life in its attempt to rid the country of corruption.

More than 150 leading politicians, officials and businessmen, as well as in some cases their wives and children, have been put behind bars.

Two former prime ministers, Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia, are facing charges of graft and extortion, and so is Khaleda Zia's son, Tareque Rahman, who used to be described as the most powerful man in Bangladesh.

His lawyer claims that Mr Rahman has been so badly tortured since being arrested a year ago that unless he receives medical treatment soon, he might no longer be able to walk.

In its latest campaign against crime, the police say they have arrested more than 25,000 people over the past three weeks.

This has put such a strain on the prisons, that the Home Ministry is considering releasing hundreds of prisoners who have served half their sentences.

But despite these draconian measures, Transparency International says that corruption has in some cases actually gone up since the government took over.

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Study links hours in front of TV to obesity

TORONTO -- Canadians who are spending lots of their leisure time in front of screens -- especially TV screens -- are more likely to be obese, a new study suggests.

It's been known for awhile that rising screen time, as it's called, is contributing to childhood obesity. But this study, drawing from data in Statistic Canada's Canadian Community Health Survey, is one of the first looking to see if there is a link between screen time and obesity among Canadian adults.

And there appears to be.

Adults who watch more than 21 hours of TV a week were 80 per cent more likely to be obese than people who watched five hours or less television. Men who spent a lot of their leisure time in front of a computer screen were 20 per cent more likely to be obese and women were 30 per cent more likely than people who didn't send much time in front of a computer.

"From this, we would suggest that decreasing television viewing time in particular may be to the advantage of people at risk of overweight or obesity,'' said Mark Tremblay, one of the authors and the director of the Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Institute at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa.

The study, based on a survey of 42,600 men and women aged 20 to 64, found that in 2007, nearly three out of every 10 Canadian adults reported they watched an average of 15 or more hours of television a week and nearly two in 10 said they watched 21 or more hours a week.

Frequent leisure time computer use was less common, with about 15 per cent of adults reporting they averaged 15 or more hours a week at their computers. Only six per cent reported 21 hours or more a week of leisure computer screen time and nearly a third said they spent none of their leisure time in front of a computer screen.

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Download Day is here!

The Best Firefox Yet

With more than 15,000 improvements, Firefox 3 is faster, safer and smarter than ever before.

To download click here

The Safest Web Browser

Firefox keeps your personal info personal and your online interests away from the bad guys.

So How Do We Do It?

What makes Firefox different? Most importantly, we’re open. That means anyone around the world (and we have thousands of experts watching our back) is able to look into our code and find any potential weak spots in our armor.

And when we hear about a problem, we roll up our sleeves and get to work fixing it right away. It’s in your best interest (and ours) to take care of the issue, even if it means admitting we’re a little less than perfect.

Simply put, your security is our top priority.

There’s a Method to Our Madness.

Nobody loves the Internet more than we do. But, scammers, spammers and trigger-happy viruses are true threats, so you need to protect yourself while using the Web.

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Why Firefox Matters

If you use the Web for a living you're probably enjoying your shiny new toy already: the official release of Firefox 3. The team at Mozilla, the group behind the free Firefox Web browser, is gunning to set a record for most downloads in a 24-hour period.

Mozilla's definitely on track with its bigger goal: taking a big bite out of Microsoft's (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) browser monopoly. Firefox grabbed 18.41% of the market in May, up from just 11% during the year-ago period, according to Web tracker NetApplications. Microsoft, by contrast, has fallen to 73.75% from 84% over the same period.

Of course, it's easy to dismiss the importance of the Web browser. The software is free, and Microsoft crushed its only serious commercial competition, Netscape, almost a decade ago. As recently as 2005, Microsoft owned 95% of the market.

But don't be fooled. Firefox has become one of the most important pieces of software around today as consumers shift from using their PCs to run applications living on their hard drives to a communications device able to connect with applications living on distant servers. As Saul Hansell at The New York Times pointed out, the browser is poised to unlock a slate of new applications in the years to come.

And, thanks to Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ), Mozilla has plenty of money. Google funnels tens of millions dollars to Mozilla in exchange getting for a valuable spot on the default home page of the browser preferred by the most avid Web surfers and developers.

As long as Google keeps the money flowing, Firefox's small team of developers moves quickly. Firefox was the first to introduce new features, like tabbed browsing, that have now become ubiquitous.

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High-Speed Storm Radars to Track Tornadoes, Fend Off Tragedy

When tornadoes start killing Boy Scouts, the world pays attention. But even as a deadly EF-4 tornado whipped through Little Sioux, Iowa, with 145-mph-plus winds last Wednesday night, federal climate scientists and a group of university researchers were in the early phases of testing high-tech replacements for an aging Doppler radar system. Twisters across the United States in 2008 are headed for a record-setting pace (February's 148 nearly doubled a 37-year-old record); however, by 2013 a new network of satellites could be triangulating microfrequencies from the sky to Wi-Fi for real-time reactions to dangerously shape-shifting weather patterns.

America's current system for detecting tornadoes—about 120 Next Generation Radar, or NEXRAD, devices tracking a storm's direction and velocity—has been the backbone of weather prediction since the early 1990s, but experts say it is deeply flawed. The radars are tilted upward from the Earth half a degree, which may not seem like much—until you factor in the curvature of the Earth. By the time you get 40 or 50 miles out, radar beams are more than one-half mile high, therefore missing the bottom third of the troposphere where severe weather often begins to form. And at 5 to 6 minutes for a complete area scan, NEXRAD simply remains too slow.

The Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) network aims to address both problems, with short-range-satellites targeting the bottom of a storm and refreshing much more often—as in every minute. "CASA radars are gap-filling radars," explains Harold Brooks, a research meteorolgist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is developing the system with four schools across the country. "While the main NEXRAD radars give a really good view of the storm aloft, CASA radars could be set up to probe that area where the NEXRAD radars don't see."

This new rig borrows technology from the U.S. Navy, which for years has been using a similar system to track vessels on the seas. CASA radars, however, will be installed just a few miles away from each other on rooftops, cell towers and other existing infrastructure. The first testbed is a network of four nodes in the middle of Tornado Alley in southwestern Oklahoma; other early sites include Houston and Mayaguez, Puerto Rico. CASA officials expects to see at least quasi-operational CASA networks within the next five years to address some well-known gaps in the NEXRAD system, and widespread deployment within the next 15 years.

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From the Ashes of the First Stars

What did the first quasars look like? The nearest quasars are now known to be supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies. Gas and dust that falls toward a quasar glows brightly, sometimes outglowing the entire home galaxy. The quasars that formed in the first billion years of the universe are more mysterious, though, with even the nature of the surrounding gas still unknown.

Above, an artist's impression shows a primordial quasar as it might have been, surrounded by sheets of gas, dust, stars and early star clusters. Exacting observations of three distant quasars now indicate emission of very specific colors of the element iron. These Hubble Space Telescope observations, which bolster recent results from the WMAP mission, indicate that a whole complete cycle of stars was born, created this iron, and died within the first few hundred million years of the universe.

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Internet fraud has taken a sinister new turn

IN 2003 a hacker released a piece of malicious software (malware), commonly known as "Blaster", which spread worldwide in a matter of days and caused major internet congestion.

The main purpose of this malware was to render the Microsoft web unusable for regular web surfers. It was written by a disgruntled consumer eager for notoriety.

Unfortunately, those days are gone. These days, most internet attacks are much more sinister and are designed for financial gain, not cyber infamy.

Organised crime has identified the web as a goldmine – providing opportunities to launch cyber attacks that will earn large amounts of money at a relatively low risk.

A "compromised" computer – one that has been attacked – via the internet has become a commodity on the underground economy, an online equivalent of the black market.

Once a computer is compromised, it can be used for a variety of purposes designed to make money, including stealing users' personal identity information, like internet banking logins. It's relatively easy and it's the websites we visit every day that make it money for jam for criminals.

Malware has increased in sophistication during the past few years and is developed much like the mainstream software providers develop software. There are "off-the-shelf" and freely available tools which simplify developing and deploying malicious software. Once an attacker has the malware, they then need to distribute it; again this service can be bought.

The most popular method for delivering this malware to potential victims is to send an email with a link to a malicious website. These emails range in their topics, from seeing the latest celebrity video or sensational headlines relating to current events – e-mails we are likely to receive on a daily basis and not think twice about clicking on and passing on.

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Software Notebook: This Dream Home comes with a Mouse

JONATHAN CLUTS is the type of guy who once rewired his dorm room to control all the lights from a central switchbox. And as a kid, he thought it would be great to be an "Imagineer," one of the creative minds behind the Disney theme parks.

He hasn't realized that particular ambition, but he has come pretty close as the director of Microsoft's strategic prototyping team, including oversight of the futuristic Microsoft Home on the company's Redmond campus.

And in an extension of that role, Cluts, 47, is one of the key people behind the new Innoventions Dream Home attraction at Disneyland. The project, scheduled to open Monday, is a partnership of Microsoft and other companies.

The Dream Home is a modern-day sequel to the Monsanto House of the Future, a Disneyland attraction from 1957 to 1967. The new Dream Home project, in Disneyland's Tomorrowland, includes some futuristic technology concepts, like its predecessor.

But the companies made a conscious decision to focus more on technological capabilities that are possible today, though not widely used.

"It's real. This isn't science fiction, and it's not pure extrapolation," Cluts said last week. "You can integrate much of what you see here now."

The problem with going purely futuristic is that people get home and say, "Wow that's cool, but it's never going to happen," Cluts explained.

By focusing on current scenarios, the Dream Home also doubles as a subtle promotional vehicle for Microsoft. For example, the dining room table is a collection of Microsoft Surface tabletop computers that display photos and videos when members of the home's fictional family place their mobile phones on the top.

Microsoft Surface computers are currently being deployed in commercial settings, so that scenario is already possible, but versions for consumers aren't expected to be available for a few years.

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New NASA Space Observatory Seeks Out Supermassive Black Holes Beyond Milky Way

On June 11th, a Delta II rocket lifted the Gamma Ray Large Area Telescope (GLAST) spacecraft off the launch pad toward an astounding mission to explore the most extreme environments in the universe, and search for signs of new laws of physics and what composes the mysterious dark matter, explain how black holes accelerate immense jets of material to nearly light speed, and help crack the mysteries of the staggeringly powerful explosions known as gamma-ray bursts most of which will be supermassive black holes in the cores of distant galaxies.

"We're interested in listening to the stories gamma rays are telling us," said Steve Ritz, mission project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Gamma rays are ancient mariners, carrying tales at light speed from the farthest reaches and earliest days of our universe. They are the progeny of wild and violent events, of particles that have been accelerated to fantastic energies, and of dark matter annihilations.

Among the discoveries made by previous satellites was that the universe is dotted with powerful gamma ray bursts lasting only a few seconds and never reappearing. Searching out these bursts, which have been linked in some cases to the implosions of very massive stars into black holes, has become a current priority of space astronomy.

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WTF!? Internet Addiction Nominated for Entry in the Manual of Mental Disorders

First, we all had mild Asperger's. Now, Internet addiction disorder? Give a geek a break. In the March issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, Jerald Block proposed that Web abuse be added to his field's bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Block cites research from South Korea, where, he says, the affliction is considered a serious public health problem, and the government estimates that 168,000 children may require psychotropic medications. In China, the Beijing Military Region Central Hospital puts the number of teenage pathological computer users at 10 million.

Like other addicts, users reportedly experience cravings (for better software, faster machines), withdrawal (logging off may cause irritability), a loss of sense of time (wee-hour fixes), and negative social repercussions (it's so much easier to date an avatar). Sound familiar? Your friend the World Wide Web may be a monkey on your back. Or not. Just ask yourself this: If Google were a drug, would I smoke it?

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Download Linux

While there are too many Linux distributions for us to include them all, here are some of the most popular Linux distros, along with their download pages.

CentOS is a distribution based on source RPMs from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), and strives to be 100% binary compatible with RHEL.

CentOS download mirrors

Damn Small Linux

Damn Small Linux is a live CD distribution that fits on a business card CD and is light enough to run on a 486 computer with as little as 16MB of RAM.

Damn Small Linux mirrors

openSUSE

The openSUSE project is sponsored by Novell to create a base for the SUSE Linux distribution it sells and supports. The openSUSE distribution is worked on by Novell employees and community members, and is suitable for desktop and server use.

You can find openSUSE downloads at download.opensuse.org, but it may be a little confusing. The project offers multiple ISOs for CD installation, DVD installation, and network installation. You can also find BitTorrents for the various downloads, and a live DVD. If you're not quite sure what you need, visit the download guide, which explains the release table, and what development versions may be available and how stable they're likely to be.

PCLinuxOS

PCLinuxOS is a popular Linux distribution distributed as a live CD that can be installed to your hard drive. Originally based on Mandriva, PCLinuxOS is now a solid distro in its own right that uses APT and Synaptic to manage packages, and some of the original Mandriva administration tools.

PCLinuxOS download

Sabayon Linux

Sabayon Linux is based on Gentoo and supports both i386 and AMD64/EMT64 architectures. It comes in a 4.7GB live DVD release, a Professional version based on the stable branch of Portage, and a 700MB CD Mini version. While Sabayon contains proprietary drivers, free software fans can disable them at boot time.

Sabayon download page

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Linux in education: Open Source provides a better solution for schools

Linux has been making inroads into K-12 education for years, but Microsoft's move to
require an audit of 300 school districts nationwide has brought Open Source into the educational limelight. As schools analyze alternatives to hefty licensing fees, lugs and Linux-in-education organizations are pointing out that Open Source solutions are better suited to the educational environment, and are only a fraction of the cost.

"We're seeing the stand alone desktop PC as a colossal failure in schools." says Paul Nelson, Technology Director for the River dale School District in Portland, Oregon. "After several years of installing PCs in classrooms, it is evident that schools do not have the staffing to support them and keep them running. Often infected with viruses and subjected to student abuse, these systems can quickly turn into a useless but expensive pile of junk in the back of the classroom." A traditional desktop PC environment often costs more than $1,000 per system -- and that's a price that Nelson and others say is too high.

A better model for schools, says Nelson, is the thin client. With disk less workstations running K12LTSP, an educational variant on the Linux terminal server project, workstations can be locked down, making them tamper-resistant and immune from computer viri and malicious code. Without the requirement of a high speed processor and a hard drive, K12LTSP systems run well even on older hardware, and systems obtained through computer recycling programs like STRUT prove to be ideal low-cost but functional clients. The average cost of new hardware required for a client workstation running K12LTSP, says Nelson, is $200 -- a fifth of the cost of the traditional setup.

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Yahoo-Google agree online ad deal

Yahoo has agreed a deal with Google which will see Yahoo use the search engine giant's advertising technology.

Under the agreement, Google ads will appear alongside some Yahoo search results in the US and Canada.

The announcement came after Yahoo said it had failed to persuade Microsoft to renew its bid to buy all of the internet company.

Recent talks concluded after Yahoo rejected a Microsoft proposal to buy just its online search business.

Potentially lucrative

Yahoo said the agreement with Google could be worth up to $800m (£410m) in additional revenue every year.

Alarm bells were already ringing on Capitol Hill over Yahoo's 'limited' trial in April of Google's technology Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC Technology Correspondent

"This commercial agreement provides Yahoo with the opportunity to deliver more relevant ads to users and provide advertisers and publishers with better advertising technology," said Eric Schmidt, Google chairman and chief executive.

"We believe that the convergence of search and display is the next major development" in online advertising industry, said Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang.

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Two Picassos stolen in Brazil

Armed robbers in Sao Paulo in Brazil have stolen two Picasso engravings and two works by famous Brazilian artists.

The men were seen on closed-circuit TV entering the Estacao Pinacoteca gallery in broad daylight, unmasked.

A print from Picasso's The Painter and the Model series and Minotaur, Drinker and Women were taken. The stolen works were valued at $600,000 (£308,350).

This is the second theft of work by Picasso in the centre of Sao Paulo in only six months.

Two oil paintings by the Brazilian artists Emiliano Di Cavalcanti and Lasar Segall were also stolen.

The museum says all the works are insured.

Last year, Pablo Picasso's Portrait of Suzanne Bloch and The Coffee Worker by Brazil's Candido Portinari, were taken from the Museum of Art of Sao Paulo.

The framed paintings were later recovered in perfect condition, leaning against a wall in a house on the outskirts of Sao Paulo.

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A month on from the Sichuan earthquake, Chinese officials have imposed tight security in some of the damaged areas, apparently to prevent protests.

Police in the city of Dujianyan stopped parents from holding a memorial ceremony at the rubble of a collapsed school where their children died.

Journalists were told they were banned from the city, and some were detained.

Parents have been demanding to know whether poorly-built schools played a part in the deaths of their children.

Thousands of schoolchildren were among the 87,000 people killed or missing after the massive 12 May earthquake.

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Military 'runs Mugabe campaign'

The BBC has obtained documents suggesting that Zimbabwe's military is actively involved in running Robert Mugabe's re-election campaign.

The documents outline plans by ruling party Zanu-PF to harass and drive out opposition supporters, especially from rural areas.

A run-off presidential vote is due to take place later in the month.

More than 60 people have been killed, thousands beaten and many more driven from their homes in related violence.

Testimony from eye-witnesses and victims from across Zimbabwe as well as internal party documents show that violence and intimidation are being used to try to guarantee the re-election of Robert Mugabe against the challenger, Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), on 27 June.

The documents suggest that the Joint Operations Command (JOC) is now running logistics and operations.

The JOC is made up of the heads of the military and state security organisations.

Another document lays out the party's tactics, including the use of scarce food supplies as a political weapon.

"Basic commodities should be sold from either people's shops or pro-Zanu-PF shops," it says. "Emphasis should be in party strongholds."

It talks about giving the notorious and feared war veterans, responsible for much of the violence in Zimbabwe, a "leading role in Zanu-PF campaigns".

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Giant greenhouse complex will be size of 80 football pitches

Britain's biggest greenhouse complex - the size of 80 football pitches - is under construction in Kent.

When it is complete it will include seven 140-metre long glasshouses covering a 220-acre site.

Using the latest technologies the computer-controlled Thanet Earth complex will have the capacity to grow salad produce such as tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers which will be picked continuously 52-weeks per year.

Operators Fresca Group Ltd., say it will increase by 15 per cent the UK's crop of salad vegetables most of which currently have to be imported.

It will have its own power generating plants to heat the cavernous greenhouses and the eco-friendly combined heat and power system will as a by-product provide enough electricity to supply half the domestic power needs of 50,000 homes in north-east Kent near to where the £80m complex is being built on the Isle of Thanet.

The greenhouses have been designed so crops can be grown suspended from the 8m-high ceilings so they are easier to pick and they will be grown in nutrient enriched water rather than soil.

They will grow more than 1.3m plants at any one time, be watered from seven 50m gallon reservoirs in a recyclable rainfall system and tended by a workforce of 550. Designers believe much of the CO2 produced by the complex will be absorbed naturally by the plants.

The industrial scale of Thanet Earth is fairly common in Europe but has never been attempted before in England. It has been sited in Kent because of the amount of natural light available throughout the year.

Chris Mack, Chairman of Fresca Group, one of Britain's biggest fresh produce suppliers, said: "It's taken a committed team over two years to turn the idea into a reality.

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US defends Afghan border strike

The Pentagon has said an air strike by US forces in the Afghan-Pakistani border region, said to have killed 11 Pakistani soldiers, was legitimate.

It said US forces had acted in self-defence after coming under attack in clashes with pro-Taleban militias.

The US state department described the deaths as regrettable, and said there was a need for better communication.

Pakistan's military said earlier that the soldiers had died as a result of an "unprovoked and cowardly act".

The incident took place on Tuesday night at a border post in the mountainous Gora Prai region of Mohmand, one of Pakistan's tribal areas, across the border from Afghanistan's Kunar province.

The US military confirmed that its forces based on the Afghan side of the border had launched artillery and air strikes after coming under fire from pro-Taleban forces.

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Concern over tidal barrage cost

The power generated by the proposed Severn Barrage could be produced more cheaply using other green technologies, a report says.

The £15bn dam across the Severn estuary from Cardiff to Weston-Super-Mare in Somerset could supply 5% of the UK's electricity within 14 years.

But an independent report commissioned by 10 environmental groups said it was not a good use of taxpayers' money.

Campaigners have also spelt out the damage to wildlife it could cause.

Considerable new evidence would be needed to make a large barrage in the Severn estuary an attractive option Says "Matthew Bell, author of the report"

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China and Taiwan re-start talks

China and Taiwan have resumed formal talks after a gap of almost 10 years.

The talks in Beijing, set to last until 14 June, are expected to lead to agreements on direct passenger flights and tourism.

Dialogue was suspended in 1999 as Taiwan's leaders began to lean towards formal independence, angering Beijing.

But relations warmed after the election in March of Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou. He favours closer ties with China, in contrast to his predecessor.

When he took office in May, Mr Ma said maintaining regional stability was his priority.

TAIWAN-CHINA RELATIONS

Ruled by separate governments since end of Chinese civil war in 1949

China considers the island part of its territory

China has offered a "one country, two systems" solution, like Hong Kong

Most people in Taiwan support status quo


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Ireland in crunch EU treaty vote

The Irish Republic is set to hold a referendum on whether to ratify the European Union reform treaty, in a vote anxiously watched across the EU.

All other 26 member states have left the issue to their parliaments, but Ireland is obliged to hold a popular vote on changes to its constitution.

All of the main Irish parties back the treaty but the No campaign has been putting up a strong challenge.

With many voters undecided, opinion polls suggest the result will be close.

Voters will be asked whether or not they approve an amendment to the constitution which would allow Ireland to ratify the Treaty of Lisbon.

The treaty's main provisions include a smaller European Commission, the removal of the national veto in more policy areas, a new president of the European Council and a strengthened foreign affairs post.

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First-ever multi-person space vacation confirmed for 2011

The company that's lofted customers to the International Space Station on five separate occasions announced today that it will launch the first private multi-person mission to the ISS in the second half of 2011.

Space Adventures announced that the 2011 flight will be a fully dedicated mission, with two Russian Soyuz-TMA spacecraft seats available for private space explorers.

Previous single-space-tourist flights have cost a reported $20 million US.
Google in spaaaace...
Google co-founder Sergey Brin is hoping to buy one of the seats on the 2011 flight.

As well, Space Adventures' sixth orbital spaceflight client, video game designer Richard Garriott, son of NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, is currently in cosmonaut training with his launch to the ISS scheduled for October 12, 2008.

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Lake bursts bank and disappears: 'It was . . . full of life, now it's gone'

LAKE DELTON, Wis. - One of the most scenic getaways for Chicagoans is devastated.

Weekend rains of biblical proportions dumped so much water into Lake Delton that it literally burst its banks.

Tens of thousands of gallons of lake water barreled through the woods, taking with it a roadway, several houses, boats, fish and lake bed. It emptied into the nearby Wisconsin River and was gone in hours.

On Tuesday morning, some 24 hours after the catastrophe, the massive lake is nearly drained. The lake is a muddy moonscape of cracked earth. Fish bake in the sun, flopping until their deaths. Mounds of dead fish are piled high. The shoreline is jagged and cracked. Boats hang in the air suspended by what is left of the docks. In parts, the little water that is left meanders like a silent brook. The roadway and earth that held the river back is now a grand canyon.

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Japan set for $4.6bn pharma deal

Leading Japanese pharmaceutical firm Daiichi Sankyo has agreed to buy a controlling stake in Indian drugs firm Ranbaxy for as much as $4b.6n (£2.3bn).

The Japanese firm is set to buy nearly 35% of the Indian company, which is a leading manufacturer of generic drugs.

The transaction comes as pharmaceutical firms face stiff rivalry from generic drugs firms in developing nations.

Shares in Daiichi Sanky ended almost 5% higher after reports of the friendly deal. Ranbaxy's shares rose 1.5%.

Daiichi said it would buy the 34.8% stake of Ranbaxy currently owned by the Indian firm's founders, the Singh family.

The Japanese firm also said it would make a bid for a further 20% of the firm.

The value of the deal is expected to be worth between $3.4bn and $4.6bn, the firms said in a statement.

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Former Indian minister arrested

A former minister from the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh has been arrested in connection with the death of a policeman.

Jamuna Nishad, from the governing Bahujan Samaj Party, quit the ministry over the weekend after a police report allegedly blamed him for the death.

Mr Nishad and his supporters are accused of attacking a police station in Maharajganj district on Saturday.

A constable died during the incident. Mr Nishad denies any wrongdoing.

The politician belongs to the Nishad community and is a popular leader.

"The former minister has been arrested in connection with the attack on the Maharajganj police station and the death of a constable there," senior police officer Akhil Kumar told the BBC.

"He will be produced in court in Lucknow [the state capital] and then sent to [the eastern town of] Gorakhpur," he said.

According to reports, at least 12 other people have been arrested in connection with the case.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati has ordered an inquiry into the incident.

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Mr Nishad is the third minister from Ms Mayawati's cabinet to resign for alleged involvement in a criminal case.

GLAST Mission Coverage

GLAST Launch Day
June 11, 2008 - 8:15 a.m. EDT
The liftoff of NASA's Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) spacecraft remains on schedule today. The launch window opens at 11:45 a.m. and extends to 1:40 p.m. EDT.

GLAST will be launched aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket from Launch Pad 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on the sunny east coast of central Florida.

Early this morning the mobile service tower was retracted from around the rocket to allow fueling of liquid oxygen, for the final phase of the launch countdown.

The sky is brilliant at this time with a 40 percent chance of weather concerns to hinder today's launch.

With high sensitivity GLAST is the first imaging gamma-ray observatory to survey the entire sky every day. It will give scientists a unique opportunity to learn about the ever-changing universe at extreme energies. GLAST will detect thousands of gamma-ray sources, most of which will be supermassive black holes in the cores of distant galaxies.

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Tamil Tigers overrun navy outpost

Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka have attacked and destroyed a small navy outpost in the north-west, killing at least three sailors, the military says.

The rebels attacked in six boats at 0215 (2045GMT) and escaped by sea, taking guns and explosives with them, Sri Lanka's defence ministry said.

Four rebels were also killed in the clash, the Tigers said.

The navy said the attack was beaten back and that in a counter-attack its forces destroyed a rebel boat.

Wounded

"Sri Lanka navy outpost at Erukkalampiddi in the Mannar island has come under pre-dawn attack by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)," the defence ministry website reported.

"The sailors have defended their post effectively," the report said, adding that three sailors and four rebels had been killed.

Four sailors were also wounded in the clash, the website reported.

The rebels admitted that four of their fighters had been killed, but said the casualties suffered by the sailors were much higher.

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The crew of space shuttle Discovery is slated to leave the International Space Station today.

On Tuesday, The STS-124 and Expedition 17 crews bid one another farewell, and closed the hatches between the two spacecraft at 4:42 p.m. EDT. Discovery is scheduled to undock from the International Space Station today at 7:42 a.m., ending its almost nine-day stay at the orbital outpost.

STS-124 arrived at the station June 2, delivering the Japanese Pressurized Module, the second pressurized component of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Kibo laboratory, to the station.

In addition, the STS-124 astronauts delivered Expedition 17 Flight Engineer Greg Chamitoff, who replaced Garrett Reisman, now a mission specialist returning to Earth aboard Discovery.

The crew also performed three spacewalks while at the station.

Discovery is scheduled to land at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., Saturday.

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Pakistan troops 'die on border'

At least 18 people are reported to have been killed in clashes on the Pakistan-Afghan border.

Ten of the dead were Pakistani troops, unnamed officials said. Reports said some of the troops may have died in an air strike by US or Nato-led forces.

Eight Taleban militants were also killed in the fighting, a Taleban spokesman said.

None of the Pakistani, Afghan or US militaries, or Nato, have not yet officially commented on the incident.

The soldiers' deaths are reported to have occurred at a border post in the Mohmand region, one of Pakistan's tribal areas, opposite Afghanistan's Kunar province, late on Tuesday.

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India in command against Pakistan in tri-series match

DHAKA - Half centuries by three top-order batsmen helped India to score a challenging 330 runs for eight wickets against Pakistan in a triangular series match on Tuesday.

Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir and Yuvraj Singh scored 89, 62 and 55 runs to register their 25th, eighth and sixth ODI half centuries respectively after India won the toss and opted to bat in their first match in the tournament that also includes hosts Bangladesh.

India started the innings strongly with Sehwag and Gambhir beating the Pakistani pace bowlers until their partnership collapsed on 155 as Gambhir was caught behind by keeper Kamran Akmal off a delivery from Wahab Riaz, who ended 2-86.

Pace bowler Omar Gul took three wickets for 61 runs while leg spinner Shahid Afridi and pacer Sohail Tanvir ended 2-52 and 1-57 respectively.

Gambhir got two chances when Younis Khan dropped him on four runs at second slip off a delivery from Riaz and he was dropped again by Younis off a delivery from Rao Iftkhar at gully on 29 runs.

Sehwag also got a break on 43 runs when the third umpire dismissed an appeal after Akmal caught him behind off a delivery from Iftkhar.

Sehwag, playing 76 balls, hit a six and 13 boundaries while Gambhir, who faced 62 balls, hit six fours. Singh played 54 balls, hitting three sixes and three boundaries before being bowled by Umar Gul.

Raina (26) also hit two sixes in 22 balls.

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Airliner in Sudan ignites, kills dozens

KHARTOUM, Sudan - A Sudanese Airbus carrying 214 people veered off the runway in a thunderstorm and burst into flames late yesterday, killing dozens unable to escape the inferno. Officials said more than 100 people fled the plane before it was engulfed by towering orange flames.

The Civil Aviation Authority confirmed that 103 passengers and all 11 crewmembers survived. It said some other passengers might have gone home directly from the crash on the rain-soaked runway after crewmembers helped them through the emergency doors.

The death toll wasn't immediately clear. Reports right after the crash said about 100 were killed, but officials later put the toll at dozens without being more precise. Deputy parliament speaker Mohammed al-Hassan al-Ameen said "about 30 people" died, while police spokesman Mohammed Abdel Majid al-Tayeb said 23 bodies were brought to the morgue.

The fire's roaring flames dwarfed the Airbus A310's shattered fuselage as firefighters sprayed water with little apparent effect, Sudanese TV footage showed. Members of the media were kept away but an Associated Press reporter heard several explosions after flames engulfed the aircraft.

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Former Nepal king to leave palace

Nepal's former king Gyanendra has spent his last night in the palace compound in Kathmandu which has been home to the royal family for more than 100 years.

He is to move to a new residence in a forest outside the city, which the government says will be a temporary one until he can find a new private home.

The palace is to become a museum and Gyanendra's crown and royal sceptre are expected to become government property.

Last month, Nepal's Maoist-led assembly voted to abolish the monarchy.

Gyanendra Shah, now an ordinary citizen, will give a press conference before he and his wife Komal, the former queen, move to Nagarjun, in the north-western suburbs of Kathmandu, officials say.

Correspondents say that the residence at Nagarjun will barely be a comedown for the former king.

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"Indy" Actor Ford Endorses New Global Tiger Initiative

A new World Bank-led tiger conservation initiative will draw on the collective might of the world's nonprofits, governments, and local citizens to prevent tigers from completely "slipping away," experts announced today. The predators have plummeted from 100,000 to 4,000 in the past century and now occupy only 7 percent of their original range.

The "urgent, immediate threat" of poaching continues to whittle down that number, Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank Group, told a press briefing at the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, D.C.

The new initiative will take a hard look at existing projects in tiger habitats, review existing efforts to combat the trade in illegal tiger parts, and develop alternative funding for saving tigers, among other strategies.

In addition, a 2010 "Year of the Tiger" summit will bring together the many groups and individuals working to preserve the big cat.

"If wild tigers are to be saved, they must be seen as more valuable alive than dead," Zoellick said. (See tiger photos.)

Because tigers are at the top of the food chain, their health is an "indicator of biodiversity and a barometer for sustainability," he added.

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Egypt Mummies Moved for DNA Tests; Pharaoh Among Them?

Three mummies have been moved from the Valley of the Kings in Luxor to the Egyptian Museum in cario begin extensive studies of their origins, Egyptian authorities recently announced. Two female mummies found in a tomb known as KV21 and one male mummy found outside the tomb of Pharaoh Seti II, who ruled from 1200 to 1194 B.C., will undergo CAT scans and DNA analysis.

Such tests could tell researchers the mysterious mummies' ancestry and could even pinpoint their identities, although it may be years before scientists can say anything definitive.

Still, the females already show promise that they may be among several Egyptian queens that archaeologists have been searching for.

Both bodies were found in the Egyptian royal pose of women: the left arm bent at the elbow with the hand clenched diagonally across the chest, and the right arm laid straight alongside the body.

"We'll try to look at the two females in KV21, because we are now looking for the families of Tutankhamun through the Egyptian Mummy Project," said Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The project is a five-year plan launched by Hawass to test and catalog the DNA of every mummy in the country.

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