|
|||||||
From the article: “Healthmate saunas feature infrared (radiant) sauna technology, which quickly heats a body directly, without having to heat the air between such as with a traditional steam sauna. It claims to be the world’s best-selling infrared sauna and to be used by NASA and the U.S. Airforce.”
From the article: “Common traits are apparent in the men whom Pope Benedict has appointed to Vatican congregations – besides Cardinal Bertone, Cardinal William Levada as prefect for Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Ivan Dias as prefect for Evangelization of Peoples and Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith as secretary for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments. The pope personally knows them well as men whose loyalty to him is beyond question and who share his theological vision. Like him, they are not afraid to take a public stance, however unpopular, in defense of “the truth.”
From the article: “Juergen Urbanski, North American general manager, said FON, which in February raised $21.7 million from backers including the founders of Google and Skype, is looking to turn the brand-name equipment into what it calls “social routers.”
The goal of the Madrid-based company is to build block-by-block networks of shared wireless connections around the globe, turning local Wi-Fi users into an army of “foneros”–its term for people who share wireless access.”
From the Washington Post: “A secret program that allowed U.S. officials to examine hundreds of thousands of private banking records from around the world in search of terrorist ties has been “absolutely essential” to protecting the country from further attacks, Vice President Cheney said yesterday. Outgoing Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said that the program, in effect since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is the thing “I’m proudest of” in his tenure and insisted that strong safeguards protect the privacy of individual Americans. “It’s really government at its best,” Snow said at a news conference. “It’s responsible government. It’s effective government.”
From Reuters: “The U.S. Episcopal Church chose Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori on Sunday as its first woman leader, a move unprecedented in the Anglican church and one likely to produce more turmoil in a faith divided over the ordination of an openly gay bishop.”
Several Catholic Bishops have said that just a move would endanger Catholic-Anglican reconciliation. Personally, I wish them all the best. One interesting note is that I first pulled up this story late last night and the picture was of Katharine Schori herself… this morning Reuters changed the picture to that of Gene Robinson, their fist openly Gay Bishop.
From the article: “While the batteries of current hybrid vehicles are charged by the gasoline engine as well as power retrieved through braking, a plug-in hybrid can also be charged by being plugged into an electrical outlet. That significantly lessens the need for gasoline power to charge the batteries.”
From Time: “The defense attorney for Pete Solis, the 19-year-old Texas community college student charged with sexually assaulting the girl dubbed “Julie Doe” in her lawsuit, told TIME that if the Texas courts accept the premise that MySpace is liable because the two met there, then his client also has a claim, since the alleged victim falsely portrayed herself on the website as 15 years old.”
From Reuters: “The U.S. Episcopal Church chose Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori on Sunday as its first woman leader, a move unprecedented in the Anglican church and one likely to produce more turmoil in a faith divided over the ordination of an openly gay bishop.”
From the article: Sony will also actively encourage fan sites and bloggers–who are mostly used to receiving cease-and-desist letters from studios–to link to the material. Links for adding Musicbox content are displayed on the site. Individuals thus could create sites focused around certain artists by linking to video channels on the Musicbox site dedicated to them, or link to several channels which, in the aggregate, comprise the most mawkish artists (in the view of the blogger) that Sony has to offer.
Just last week the RIAA started suing amateur video producers for using snippets of their music. Now Sony WANTS these same amateurs to promote their crap? I don’t think so.
From ArsTechnica: As if the game itself was not controversial enough, it has been discovered that the publishers, Left Behind Games (a publicly traded company, even) have added money-changers to their particular temple. The game comes fully loaded with what some would term built-in spyware, in the form of in-game advertising that tracks the amount of time ads are seen, how often the game is played, and the player’s geographical and personal information. It then sends this data back to the advertiser’s servers.
From the article: Appel has shepherded development of the thermal conversion process (previously known as the thermal depolymerization process; Appel changed the unwieldy moniker last year) since 1997, building on organic-solids-into-oil research stretching back nearly a century. By 1999 he had lined up investors, hired an engineering staff, and had a pilot plant chewing through seven tons of waste daily in a Philadelphia industrial yard. Early in 2003, company officials predicted their first industrial-size plant would be steaming ahead 24/7 in Carthage by that summer. As it turned out, continuous production did not start until February 2005.”
From Slate: “I’ve often wondered what it’s like to be outgoing—a social butterfly, an extrovert. That’s why TV ads for Paxil caught my eye. You’ve seen them: They promise ease in a pill. An end to social anxiety. Does my degree of shyness warrant medication? It was enough to make me want to see what life was like without being shy. I wondered what Paxil could do for me. Was a smoother, suaver Seth just 20 milligrams away?
This guy spent just a month and a half on the popular SSRI Paxil. There are millions that are on other SSRIs, some with MUCH more severe side-effects and withdrawal symptoms who were roped in by the drugs lofty promises and with nary a mention of the possible withdrawal consequences. The most interesting part of the article for me is the section in which the author writes of his decreased creativity — this is actually a side effect that seems only to make the rounds in the various support groups on the Internet that are all-too-quickly dismissed as “crazy people saying crazy things.”
With the US Military only providing 6-12 computers per 1,000 troops, some enterprising geekSoldiers have taken the Internet into their own hands: literally. Using a satellite uplink, some readily available hardware and software and more than a little innovation, they’ve created “Hajjinets” on bases across Iraq to provide wireless Internet connectivity for their fellow soldiers. — Anything to keep our guys sane and connected to what’s happening back home is a GOOD thing.
From the article: “MANY governments, including some that claim to be leading the fight against global warming, are harbouring a dirty little secret. These countries are emitting far more greenhouse gas than they say they are, a fact that threatens to undermine not only the shaky Kyoto protocol but also the new multibillion-dollar market in carbon trading.”
From eWeek: “According to telecom industry reports, Google said its capital expenditures will exceed the $800 million in 2005. Analysts suggest that the actual amount may be in the $1.25 billion range. Some suggest that a portion of this investment is going into purchases of dark fiber, or unused fiber-optic telecommunications infrastructure built in the late 1990s.”
For more than a year now, Google has been buying up the “dark fiber” that was laid during the dot.com boom but never used. Much speculation has occurred as to the reason for their purchases. Tech pundits have suggested everything from a Google-Internet to a leverage against Telcos tiering Google out of existence.
From the article: “The blended attack uses social engineering techniques in its attempt to trick people to the site, security vendor Websense said in an advisory. An SMS text message is sent to the targets’ cell phones, thanking them for subscribing to a fictitious dating service. The message states that they will be automatically charged a fee of $2.00 per day via their phone bill, unless their subscription is cancelled online.”
From eWeek: “It was only a few years ago that parents were cautioning their children not to set off into technology careers; the recession after the boom years shattered the sheen on the field, which no longer seemed a safe place to invest one’s future.”
From ArsTechnica: Alexander Eric Smith was arrested after a three-month stretch where he periodically parked in front of a coffee shop off-and-on with a laptop and used its WAP. The kicker? He never bought so much as a small latte. Brewed Awakenings manager Emily Pranger finally tired of his presence and called 911. Police came and told Smith to surf elsewhere. After returning, he was taken into custody and charged with theft of services.”
From the article: “With this new system, I guess you can say brown is the new green,’ said EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, standing in front of a UPS truck that will test the system on the streets of Detroit starting in August. The new system replaces a truck’s transmission with hydraulics and that, combined with a low-emission diesel engine, yields a 60 percent to 70 percent saving on fuel use.”
From the article: “This week, Nanosolar, a startup in Palo Alto, CA, announced plans to build a production facility with the capacity to make enough solar cells annually to generate 430 megawatts. This output would represent a substantial portion of the worldwide production of solar energy. According to Nanosolar’s CEO Martin Roscheisen, the company will be able to produce solar cells much less expensively than is done with existing photovoltaics because its new method allows for the mass-production of the devices. In fact, maintains Roscheisen, the company’s technology will eventually make solar power cost-competitive with electricity on the power grid.
More after the Jump »
