July 11, 2006, 8:51 PM CT

Taking the Mickey

In a similar vein to the Ramones bears by Toxic Teddies and the Sex Pistols Kubricks by Medicom, here's another take on the punk toy theme. This time it's Japanese brand ROEN who have teamed up with Medicom and Disney, creating a Mickey Mouse figurine based on the iconic London Calling sleeve photo of Paul Simonon.

Currently it's not available outside Japan but with a bit of luck and fast action you might be able to get the figurine on eBay for around $50.

Sure to be a future collectible. Wonder what's next, Buzzcocks beanie babies?.........

Posted by: Gina      Permalink         Source

July 11, 2006, 8:08 PM CT

Hackers target State Dept. computers

Investigators believe hackers stole sensitive U.S. information and passwords and implanted backdoors in unclassified government computers to allow them to return at will, said U.S. officials familiar with the hacking.

These people spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the widespread intrusions and the resulting investigation.........

Posted by: Tom      Permalink         Source

July 11, 2006, 7:43 PM CT

Off topic: a-la-matt

My friend Matt writes an off-topic post on soccer once in a while. He is a real soccer fan, who grew up in the wrong country. Therefore, he chose to root for an English team (Arsenal) and France (where he spent some of his life) as his national team. He often writes analogies between open source companies (mainly Alfresco lately ;-) and soccer.

Matt was the reason for me to start this blog and I like him. Unfortunately for him, he is just bad at picking soccer teams. His Arsenal was crashed in the Champions League final (nobody remembers who you beat to get there, people just remember the winner), France was crashed today in the World Cup final by Italy.........

Posted by: Jim      Permalink         Source

July 9, 2006, 8:13 PM CT

Microsoft "iSoft" VS Apple iPod

Apple has had total control of the handheld MP3 market since the birth of iPod in 2001. Competitors are not giving i though and are coming out with their handheld MP3 devices to go against iPod all the time, but none of them really ever take the lead at the moment. We have seen Sony trying hard to take the lead against Apple but failed, what to say with Microsoft? I'm sure some of you have heard about Microsoft is going to come out with their latest high-end handheld MP3 devices which will be the "iPod killer".

As heard from the rumors, the secret weapon device will only be announced in November. It should be the right time for Christmas when it reaches the market with glory. It should be a good news but what Apple has in hand? Apple is going to come out with the next model of iPod and probably will hit the market at the same with so-called Microsoft iPod Killer. According to rumor, the former head of XBox division will be in charge of this project, Robbie Bach. Will the Microsoft new music player break into this market in the same way that the XBox broke into the video game market?

We heard that Microsoft new portable media player is going to have a built-in wireless communication capability for music downloading. A Wi-Fi function could also enable localized ad transmission and ad hoc short-range networks. I'm very sure during the next released of new iPod model, Apple won't miss these two capabilities as well. If they come out with Bluetooth headset, then Microsoft iPod Killer will turn out to be Microsoft iPod Loser. The new device is definitely going to have a larger screen size than the current iPod but will it be thinner and lighter as well?........

Posted by: Gina      Permalink         Source

July 7, 2006, 6:54 AM CT

Inflation Top Concern Of Consumers

Consumers demonstrated their resilience once again in the June 2006 survey. "Despite high gas prices and rising interest rates, consumer confidence improved in June," as per Richard Curtin, the Director of the University of Michigan's Survey of Consumers. The rebound moved consumer confidence back toward its average level during the past 50 years, eventhough it still remains substantially below the year earlier figure. "Rather than a free-fall in confidence that has sparked recessions in the past, consumers have demonstrated a resilience based on a newfound sense of long-term economic stability," as per Curtin. While consumers will curtail their spending in the year ahead to accommodate higher gas prices and smaller cash-outs from home refinancing, the spending cutback will be moderate. "The growth rate in overall spending will slow to about 2¾ percent during the year ahead," Curtin said.

The Index of Consumer Sentiment was 84.9 in the June 2006 survey, up from 79.1 in May, but well below the 96.0 recorded in June of 2005. Most of the June gain was in consumers' evaluations of current economic conditions, and most of the loss compared with a year ago was in consumers' future economic prospects. The Index of Consumer Expectations, a closely watched component of the Index of Leading Economic Indicators, rose slightly to 72.0 in June from 68.2 in May, but remained significantly below the 85.0 recorded in June of 2005. In comparison, the Current Economic Conditions Index rose to 105.0 in June 2006, up significantly from 96.1 in May, but remained somewhat below the 113.2 in June of 2005.........

Posted by: Tom      Permalink         Source

July 4, 2006, 9:19 AM CT

Who Gets Death Sentences

When victims of capital crimes are white, jurors are more likely to hand down death sentences to defendants with stereotypically black features, a new study from four universities, including Cornell, shows.

The study, "Looking Deathworthy: Perceived Stereotypicality of Black Defendants Predicts Capital-Sentencing Outcomes," is the first to examine whether death sentences are influenced by juries' perceptions of defendants' features as stereotypically black. The results are reported in the recent issue of Psychological Science.

The scientists include Cornell law Professor Sheri Lynn Johnson, associate director of the Cornell Death Penalty Project, who provided the legal expertise; lead researcher Jennifer Eberhardt, associate professor of psychology at Stanford University; and co-authors Paul Davies, professor of social psychology at the University of California-Los Angeles, and Valerie Purdie-Vaughns, assistant professor of psychology at Yale University.

The scientists obtained photographs of 44 black, male defendants convicted of murdering whites between 1979 and 1999 in Pennsylvania, a state that has the death penalty. Stanford undergraduates of various ethnicities were shown the photographs and asked to report whether the men's appearance seemed stereotypically black on a scale of 1 to 11. They were told they could base their judgments on any number of features, including hair texture, skin tone and shape of lips and noses. They were not told the purpose of the study or that the men had been convicted of capital crimes.........

Posted by: Tom      Permalink         Source

July 3, 2006, 9:09 AM CT

Graduated Driver Licensing Reduces Fatal Crashes

Graduated driver licensing programs reduce, by an average of 11 percent, the incidence of fatal crashes of 16-year-old drivers, as per a research studyby scientists from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Injury Research and Policy and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. When examining the most comprehensive programs, which include at least five of seven components [see list below], the scientists found about a 20 percent reduction in fatal crashes involving 16-year-old drivers. The report was supported primarily by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and in part by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Graduated driver licensing programs are a popular way to reduce the risk of vehicle crashes for novice drivers. We already knew that the programs reduced crash rates of young drivers, but we didn't know which programs were most effective in reducing risk," said Susan P. Baker, MPH, lead author of the study and a professor in the Bloomberg School of Public Health's Department of Health Policy and Management and Center for Injury Research and Policy. "After completing our study, it is clear that more comprehensive programs have the greatest effect".

"This study strongly underscores the effectiveness of graduated licensing laws. To states searching for solutions to the tragic problem of fatal crashes involving teenagers, it provides extremely valuable new information," said Nicole Nason, NHTSA Administrator.........

Posted by: Jim      Permalink         Source

July 1, 2006, 9:24 AM CT

Taking a controlling interest in chips

Four time Hugo Award winner Vernor Vinge has taken readers to the depths of space and into the far future in his bestselling novels "A Fire Upon the Deep and "A Deepness in the Sky. Now, he has written a science-fiction thriller set in a place and time as exciting and strange as any far-future world: San Diego, California, 2025.

Robert Gu is a recovering Alzheimer's patient. The world that he remembers was much as we know it today. Now, as he regains his faculties through a cure developed during the years of his near-fatal decline, he discovers that the world has changed and so has his place in it. He was a world-renowned poet. Now he is seventy-five years old, though by a medical miracle he looks much younger, and he's starting over, for the first time unsure of his poetic gifts. Living with his son's family, he has no choice but to learn how to cope with a new information age in which the virtual and the real are a seamless continuum, layers of reality built on digital views seen by a single person or millions, depending on your choice. But the consensus reality of the digital world is available only if, like his thirteen-year-old granddaughter Miri, you know how to wear your wireless access--through nodes designed into "smart clothes--and to see the digital context--through "smart contact lenses.........

Posted by: Brooke      Permalink         Source

July 1, 2006, 9:13 AM CT

'Who Killed the Electric Car?

A murder mystery, a call to arms and an effective inducement to rage, "Who Killed the Electric Car?" is the latest and one of the more successful additions to the growing ranks of issue-oriented documentaries. Like Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" and the better nonfiction inquiries into the war in Iraq, this information-packed history about the effort to introduce - and keep - electric vehicles on the road wasn't made to soothe your brow. For the film's director, Chris Paine, the evidence is too appalling and our air too dirty for palliatives.

Fast and furious, "Who Killed the Electric Car?" is, in brief, the sad tale of yet one more attempt by a heroic group of civic-minded souls to save the browning, warming planet. The story mostly unfolds during the 1990's, when a few automobile manufacturers, including General Motors, were prodded to pursue - only to sabotage covertly - a cleaner future. In 1990 the state's smog-busting California Air Resources Board adopted the Zero-Emission Vehicle mandate in a bid to force auto companies to produce exhaust-free vehicles.........

Posted by: Jim      Permalink         Source

July 1, 2006, 9:08 AM CT

Torture teachers

Human rights advocates have long suspected a link between interrogations in the "war on terror" and a secretive military survival school that trains elite U.S. troops to resist torture. Jane Mayer explored the evidence of a correlation between the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape school at Fort Bragg, N. C., and real-world interrogators in a July 2005 piece for the New Yorker.

Now Salon has the first hard proof of that connection, via one document buried among 1,000 pages obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through the Freedom of Information Act. A March 22, 2005, sworn statement by the former chief of the Interrogation Control Element at Guantánamo said instructors from SERE also taught their methods to interrogators of the prisoners in Cuba.........

Posted by: Tom      Permalink         Source

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