Planet jcm

FDA to dieters: Don't use supplement Hydroxycut
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - Government health officials warned dieters and body builders Friday to immediately stop using Hydroxycut, a widely sold supplement linked to cases of serious liver damage and at least one death.
FDA Warns Consumers to Stop Taking Hydroxycut Products Wall Street Journal
FDA Recalls Dietary Supplements Tied to 1 Death, Liver Damage Forbes
WWAY NewsChannel 3 - Los Angeles Times - Health Jackal - CBS42
all 711 news articles

Idaho Names Highway Stimulus Projects - LocalNews8.com

2009-05-01T21:30:48+00:00

KLEW

Idaho Names Highway Stimulus Projects
LocalNews8.com
BOISE - Idaho Governor CL "Butch" Otter today announced that eight shovel-ready highway projects - creating 2800 jobs and injecting $148 million into Idaho's economy - will be advertised for bid in May and June.
Idaho's Otter still trying to win gas-tax hike Forbes
Governor announces highway projects Idaho Press-Tribune
IdahoStatesman.com - Lewiston Morning Tribune (subscription) - The Olympian - Forbes
all 187 news articles

Chevron 1Q profit falls 64 pct as oil prices drop - Forbes

2009-05-01T21:30:06+00:00

Chevron 1Q profit falls 64 pct as oil prices drop
Forbes - John Porretto
By JOHN PORRETTO , 05.01.09, 05:16 PM EDT The top international oil companies were expected to deliver the ugliest first-quarter results in several years, and there were few surprises.
Despite Slump, Major US Oil Cos Forge Ahead With Investment Wall Street Journal
Chevron profit slides on weak oil Reuters
Bloomberg - Bizjournals.com - MarketWatch - Wall Street Journal
all 718 news articles

Mixed Reviews For ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine' - MTV.com

2009-05-01T21:29:55+00:00

Mixed Reviews For ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine'
MTV.com
FROM MTV.COM: “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” leaked online on April 1 for all to watch on their computer screens. A month later, the full version has arrived on bigger screens in movie theaters across the country.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (PG-13, 107 minutes) Washington Post
How big will 'Wolverine' be? AZ Central.com
New York Times - Los Angeles Times - Buffalo News - CNET News
all 2,773 news articles

Pa. social workers charged after starvation death

2009-05-01T21:28:38+00:00

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- By all accounts, there is blame to go around for the 2006 starvation death of disabled teenager Danieal Kelly. Her mother pleaded guilty to murder this week for criminally neglecting the once-vivacious girl. Her case worker and a supervisor are charged with involuntary manslaughter for alleged "ghost visits" to the family's squalid home....

Developments on swine flu worldwide

2009-05-01T21:28:38+00:00

Key developments on swine flu outbreaks, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, World Health Organization and government officials: _Deaths: 15 confirmed in Mexico and one confirmed in U.S., a toddler from Mexico who died in Texas....

Pa. social workers charged after starvation death (AP)

2009-05-01T21:28:36+00:00

AP - By all accounts, there is blame to go around for the 2006 starvation death of disabled teenager Danieal Kelly. Her mother pleaded guilty to murder this week for criminally neglecting the once-vivacious girl. Her case worker and a supervisor are charged with involuntary manslaughter for alleged "ghost visits" to the family's squalid home.

Obama Vows ‘Independent’ Replacement for Souter

2009-05-01T21:28:19+00:00

Justice David H. Souter formally told the White House on Friday that he will retire from the Supreme Court at the end of the current term. <a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=c5f90479dec30b18b70f8eacf379a7e9&p=1"><img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=c5f90479dec30b18b70f8eacf379a7e9&p=1"/></a>

Woman accused in Maine of bid to bite flight crew (AP)

2009-05-01T21:27:56+00:00

AP - A British woman accused of downing prescription drugs, two or three bottles of wine and liquid soap from a London-bound jetliner's lavatory before scuffling with flight attendants will remain in jail in Maine over the weekend.

Las Vegas Strip performer Danny Gans dead at 52

2009-05-01T21:27:40+00:00

Singer, actor and impressionist Danny Gans, a one-time minor league baseball player who spent more than a decade as one of the most popular entertainers in Las Vegas, died suddenly Friday, authorities said. He was 52. Gans was pronounced dead in his bed...

Drug smugglers from Mexico move into NM town

2009-05-01T21:27:23+00:00

COLUMBUS, N.M. (AP) -- This dusty little border town with almost no visible means of support has been seeing something of a boom in the past year: Brand-new Lincoln Navigators and Cadillac Escalades with flashy hubcaps are parked just off the bleak main drag. Homes are selling quickly, sometimes for cash. The source of this sudden wealth? An influx of Mexican drug smugglers, investigators say....

Drug smugglers from Mexico move into NM town (AP)

2009-05-01T21:27:14+00:00

Chronicle names new senior VP of advertising

2009-05-01T21:27:01+00:00

A Gannett Co. executive on Friday was named senior vice president of advertising for The San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate.com. Jeff Bergin, 47, was most recently vice president of sales for Gannett's U.S. Community Publishing Division. He has worked in a...

'Junior' Gotti's mother speaks out in NYC court

2009-05-01T21:27:00+00:00

NEW YORK (AP) -- The mother of John "Junior" Gotti interrupted a hearing on her son's racketeering case Friday by telling a federal judge that the government is trying to kill him before he even gets to trial....

US factory output continues fall

2009-05-01T21:27:00+00:00

US manufacturing activity fell further in April - but at a slower pace than in March - figures suggest.

'Junior' Gotti's mother speaks out in NYC court (AP)

2009-05-01T21:26:54+00:00

AP - The mother of John "Junior" Gotti interrupted a hearing on her son's racketeering case Friday by telling a federal judge that the government is trying to kill him before he even gets to trial.

Souter's home state glad to have him back (AP)

2009-05-01T21:26:49+00:00

U.S. Justice Souter resigns (Reuters)

2009-05-01T21:26:48+00:00

Alleged Nazi Demjanjuk cleared for deportation

2009-05-01T21:24:32+00:00

CLEVELAND (AP) -- A federal appeals court opened the way again Friday for the Justice Department to deport alleged Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk to Germany to face 29,000 counts of accessory to murder. The three-judge ruling from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati denied a stay of deportation for the 89-year-old retired autoworker from his suburban Cleveland home....

Alleged Nazi Demjanjuk cleared for deportation (AP)

2009-05-01T21:24:25+00:00

Las Vegas entertainer Danny Gans dead at 52

2009-05-01T21:22:12+00:00

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Danny Gans, one of the most popular entertainers on the Las Vegas Strip for the last decade, died in his sleep Friday. He was 52. Gans was found dead about 3 a.m. by his wife, Julie, at their home in Henderson, said Wynn Resorts spokeswoman Jennifer Dunne....

Popular Las Vegas entertainer Danny Gans dies at 52 (AP)

2009-05-01T21:22:04+00:00

Forest Service closes caves to stop bat fungus

2009-05-01T21:21:36+00:00

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) -- The U.S. Forest Service is closing thousands of caves and former mines in national forests in 33 states in an effort to control a fungus that has already killed an estimated 500,000 bats....

Hydroxycut Diet Supplements Recalled

2009-05-01T21:21:35+00:00

Federal drug regulators warned consumers to stop using the Hydroxycut line of popular weight-loss products, citing reports of a death due to liver failure and other serious health problems.

Forest Service closes caves to stop bat fungus (AP)

2009-05-01T21:21:30+00:00

Repairman accused of peeping at woman in shower

2009-05-01T21:21:16+00:00

EAU CLAIRE, Wis. (AP) -- A furnace repairman was accused of poking holes in a bathroom wall where he was working in order to invade a woman's privacy. The thirty-five-year-old man was charged with disorderly conduct and invasion of privacy....

Repairman accused of peeping at woman in shower (AP)

2009-05-01T21:21:03+00:00

AP - A furnace repairman was accused of poking holes in a bathroom wall where he was working in order to invade a woman's privacy. The thirty-five-year-old man was charged with disorderly conduct and invasion of privacy.

Microsoft Says All Windows 7 Versions Run on Netbooks - NewsFactor Network

2009-05-01T21:20:01+00:00

The Age

Microsoft Says All Windows 7 Versions Run on Netbooks
NewsFactor Network - Mark Long
By Mark Long While Microsoft will allow manufacturers to install Windows 7 Starter on low-cost netbooks, Windows General Manager Mike Ybarra said all versions of Windows 7 may work on many netbooks.
Microsoft to give away Windows 7 for almost 13 months DVICE
Microsoft issues Windows 7 RC on road to October launch Apple Insider
ChannelWeb - ZDNet - eWeek - Tom's Hardware Guide
all 689 news articles

How a "smart charger" could ease transition to electric cars

2009-05-01T21:20:00+00:00

Imagine all the folks on the waiting list for the Chevy Volt or a plug-in Toyota Prius plugged in their cars at once. The result? Blackout, as the world's largest machine (otherwise known as the electric grid) is overloaded. [More]

Now more than 140 swine flu cases in US

2009-05-01T21:19:45+00:00

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama voiced hope Friday that the swine flu virus will run its course "like ordinary flus" as officials reported more than two dozen new cases and scores more schools shut down....

Now more than 140 swine flu cases in US (AP)

2009-05-01T21:19:44+00:00

A look at potential Obama nominees to high court

2009-05-01T21:19:37+00:00

Court watchers think President Barack Obama will choose a woman for his first nomination to the Supreme Court, where only one of nine seats is held by a female _ Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. With Justice David Souter expected to retire this year, here are the...

Space Shuttle Layoffs Begin - eWeek

2009-05-01T21:17:01+00:00

How To: build the ultimate, cheap home pizza oven

Space Shuttle Layoffs Begin
eWeek - Roy Mark
Despite concerns in Congress, NASA begins the first steps in decommissioning the space shuttle fleet with 160 layoffs. By September 2010, more than 900 shuttle employees are expected to be lose their jobs.
NASA Begins Job Cuts for Shuttle Retirement Space.com
Unit marks 50 years of NASA support Air Force Link
TG Daily - io9 - RedOrbit - The Write Stuff
all 451 news articles

Gates reluctant to bolster U.S. Afghan force further (Reuters)

2009-05-01T21:16:56+00:00

Airman in Alaska charged with forced miscarriage

2009-05-01T21:16:36+00:00

A court-martial is under way in Alaska for an airman on charges he laced his wife's food with ulcer medication to force her to miscarry. Airman 1st Class Scott Boie of Milton, Wis., is charged with assault and causing the death of the unborn child. Boie's...

Politi-quotes: The week in one-liners

2009-05-01T21:16:16+00:00

Beauty contenstant on gay marriage, and other gems in this week's top ten best quotes.

Vikings draft pick Harvin hospitalized in Atlanta - The Associated Press

2009-05-01T21:15:44+00:00

CharlotteObserver.com

Vikings draft pick Harvin hospitalized in Atlanta
The Associated Press
EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. (AP) - The Minnesota Vikings first-round draft pick Percy Harvin has been hospitalized due to severe dehydration Coach Brad Childress says Harvin became ill Thursday on a flight to Atlanta.
Vikings rookie Percy Harvin hospitalized in Atlanta; swine flu ... Pro Football Weekly
Percy Harvin Tested for H1N1 Flu FOX 9 News
Viking Update (subscription) - Daily Norseman - Minneapolis Star Tribune - Pioneer Press
all 396 news articles

White House joins FaceBook, Twitter, MySpace - The Associated Press

2009-05-01T21:15:43+00:00

Telegraph.co.uk

White House joins FaceBook, Twitter, MySpace
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - OMG. The White House is joining the popular social network sites of Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. The White House on Friday added the features to its main Web page, whitehouse.
Meet White House 2.0, same as White House 1.0 (but on Twitter!) VentureBeat
Interim Obama Communications Chief New York Times
CNN Political Ticker - Politico - ABC News
all 318 news articles

HOWTO bake awesome pizzas by lining your oven with bricks - Boing Boing Gadgets

2009-05-01T21:15:35+00:00

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Steven's leveled up his pizza stone by building a cheap, effective refractory brick enclosure in his oven that lets him attain very high temperatures and kick-ass pizzas.

You're going to pre-heat to 500F. But how do you know when the stone is ready? You could give it maybe 30 minutes and hope for the best. Or, splurge a little. A $45 infrared digital thermometer is not only a fun toy, it's the perfect way to assess surface temp from a safe distance.
Open the oven and quickly shine the beam onto the stone every 15 minutes. Any more often than that will a) let more heat escape, and b) lower your spirits. Compared to when I pre-heated the pizza stone all by its lonesome, getting the stone up to 470F when surrounded by the brick house took 30 minutes longer. Makes sense, you've just added twice as much ceramic or terra cotta to the mix.

Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

Cartoon For May 01, 2009

2009-05-01T21:15:00+00:00

Cartoon for Today, May 01, 2009

John Muir's clockwork desk

2009-05-01T21:13:23+00:00

Molly sends us this clockwork study desk built by naturalist John Muir while at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1861-1863:

I invented a desk in which the books I had to study were arranged in order at the beginning of each term. I also made a bed which set me on my feet every morning at the hour determined on, and in dark winter mornings just as the bed set me on the floor it lighted a lamp. Then, after the minutes allowed for dressing had elapsed, a click was heard and the first book to be studied was pushed up from a rack below the top of the desk, thrown open, and allowed to remain there the number of minutes required. Then the machinery closed the book and allowed it to drop back into its stall, then moved the rack forward and threw up the next in order, and so on, all the day being divided according to the times of recitation, and time required and allotted to each study.

(Thanks, Molly!)

Pig Flu: Et Tu, Pooh?

2009-05-01T21:11:51+00:00

Click for larger size. (Thanks, Sebastian, Mark K., and Stefanie.)

NYMEX-Crude ends up on technicals, economic data - Reuters

2009-05-01T21:10:18+00:00

The Money Times

NYMEX-Crude ends up on technicals, economic data
Reuters
NEW YORK, May 1 (Reuters) - US crude futures rose 4 percent on Friday to settle above $53 a barrel in what sources called a technical breakout as improved consumer confidence and the dollar's weakness versus the euro helped lift prices.
Oil Rises to a Five-Week High as Consumer Confidence Improves Bloomberg
Oil rises on economic hopes; ends week up $3.2% MarketWatch
CNNMoney.com - The Associated Press - Wall Street Journal - Reuters
all 554 news articles

Apple's push into chips could unnerve suppliers - Reuters

2009-05-01T21:10:18+00:00

ITProPortal

Apple's push into chips could unnerve suppliers
Reuters - Gabriel Madway, Clare Baldwin
By Gabriel Madway and Clare Baldwin - Analysis SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc (AAPL.O) appears to be pushing toward designing its own microchips for the iPhone, a move that would give it greater control but inevitably affect its base of suppliers.
Apple building a secret chip empire -- and a competitive advantage ITworld.com
ipod touch Net share grew 36% in April CNNMoney.com
ITProPortal - Infopackets
all 13 news articles

iPhone's killer app: eBooks? - CNET News

2009-05-01T21:09:54+00:00

iPhone's killer app: eBooks?
CNET News - Dave Rosenberg
by Dave Rosenberg O'Reilly's Ben Lorica took a look (slides below) at the developers behind the most successful applications on the iPhone and found that eBooks may be the killer app, simply because there is a such of wealth of offerings.
Apple's app store thinks small CNNMoney.com
Will the people pay for quality iPhone games? msnbc.com
FierceWireless - ZDNet Blogs - PC World - Wired News
all 228 news articles

Manufacturing declines at slower rate in April - The Associated Press

2009-05-01T21:09:41+00:00

Manufacturing declines at slower rate in April
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - US manufacturing activity in April posted its best showing since September, when the financial crisis erupted. The performance was driven by a rise in new orders reflecting higher business and consumer spending.
Manufacturing rebound in the works CNNMoney.com
Manufacturing contraction slows in April, ISM says MarketWatch
Bloomberg - Reuters - International Business Times - msnbc.com
all 435 news articles

Fla. deputy missed 2nd tip in Caylee Anthony case

2009-05-01T21:08:42+00:00

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) -- The sheriff's deputy who was criticized for his poor response to a tip that eventually led to the discovery of Caylee Anthony's remains had failed to follow up on a call from another tipster who thought the missing toddler's remains would be found in woods near her home, according to documents released Friday....

Fla. deputy missed 2nd tip in Caylee Anthony case (AP)

2009-05-01T21:08:33+00:00

AP - The sheriff's deputy who was criticized for his poor response to a tip that eventually led to the discovery of Caylee Anthony's remains had failed to follow up on a call from another tipster who thought the missing toddler's remains would be found in woods near her home, according to documents released Friday.

Flu Models Predict Pandemic, But Flu Chips Ready

2009-05-01T21:08:00+00:00

An anonymous reader writes "Supercomputer software models predict that swine flu will likely go pandemic sometime next week, but flu chips capable of detecting the virus within four hours are already rolling off the assembly line. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which has designated swine flu as the '2009 H1N1 flu virus,' is modeling the spread of the virus using modeling software designed by the Department of Defense back when avian flu was a perceived threat. Now those programs are being run on cluster supercomputers and predict that officials are not implementing enough social distancing--such as closing all schools--to prevent a pandemic. Companies that designed flu-detecting chips for avian flu, are quickly retrofitting them to detect swine flu, with the first flu chips being delivered to labs today." Relatedly, at least one bio-surveillance firm is claiming they detected and warned the CDC and the WHO about the swine flu problem in Mexico over two weeks before the alert was issued.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Washington Post Swings To 1Q Loss; Ad Slump Deepens - Wall Street Journal

2009-05-01T21:07:10+00:00

Washington Post Swings To 1Q Loss; Ad Slump Deepens
Wall Street Journal
Washington Post Co. (WPO) reported Friday that it swung to a first-quarter loss and higher charges as its struggling newspaper and magazine units continued to weigh on results, with the advertising slump worsening at its namesake newspaper.
S&P may cut Washington Post's rating on revenue slide Reuters
Washington Post takes loss on charges, ad declines MarketWatch
CNBC - MSN Money - Washington Post - Bizjournals.com
all 217 news articles

Obama wants Supreme Court nominee with 'a sharp and independent mind'

2009-05-01T21:06:00+00:00

The president says he'll consult with both parties in replacing retiring Justice David Souter, whose replacement is unlikely to alter the court's ideological balance.

With the announced retirement of Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter, President Obama said today that he would seek a replacement with "a sharp and independent mind."

Mexico confirms 15 deaths, 358 cases of A/H1N1 flu - Xinhua

2009-05-01T21:04:45+00:00

New York Times

Mexico confirms 15 deaths, 358 cases of A/H1N1 flu
Xinhua - Mu Xuequan
MEXICO CITY, May 1 (Xinhua) -- Mexican Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova reported on Friday that 15 people have died of and 358 were infected with influenza A/H1N1 virus, after the analysis of 776 samples.
Video: H1N1 Virus WTNH
The revenge of the swine Inquirer.net
CNN International - Bloomberg - PRESS TV - United Press International
all 46,392 news articles

Kraske: Is Sebelius the true bipartisan queen? Brownback survives ... - Kansas City Star

2009-05-01T21:04:02+00:00

fox4kc.com

Kraske: Is Sebelius the true bipartisan queen? Brownback survives ...
Kansas City Star
What was striking about a visit to the Capitol last week was just how relieved - to use a form of that word again - many lawmakers were to have Gov.
Kan. gov: Pay cut for state workers not needed Forbes
Parkinson calls for shared sacrifice Kansas.com
KCTribune.com - NTV - Kansas City Star - NTV
all 48 news articles

Djokovic sets up Federer meeting

2009-05-01T21:03:36+00:00

Reigning champion Novak Djokovic will play Roger Federer in the semi-final of the Rome Masters, while Rafael Nadal also reaches the last four.

Kabul spectacle

2009-05-01T20:59:49+00:00

English visitors bring cricket delight to Afghanistan

U.S. to Drop Spy Case Against Pro-Israel Lobbyists

2009-05-01T20:59:27+00:00

Two former lobbyists had been charged under the Espionage Act for disseminating sensitive information. <a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=b3280448db1236af8e5a4d45f2d6807b&p=1"><img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=b3280448db1236af8e5a4d45f2d6807b&p=1"/></a>

Higgins stumbles closer to final

2009-05-01T20:58:45+00:00

John Higgins leads 15-9 and needs two frames to reach his fourth World Championship final after a brave fightback by Mark Allen.

Chrysler's 48% Drop in Sales Is Industry's Worst - New York Times

2009-05-01T20:58:28+00:00

Globe and Mail

Chrysler's 48% Drop in Sales Is Industry's Worst
New York Times - Nick Bunkley
By NICK BUNKLEY DETROIT - Chrysler said Friday that its sales fell 48 percent in April, the steepest drop in the industry, as the company descended into bankruptcy.
GM sales down 34 percent Bizjournals.com
Auto Sales Remain Bleak In April; Toyota Lags CNNMoney.com
Reuters - BBC News - Bloomberg - Wall Street Journal
all 427 news articles

openSUSE News: openSUSE 11.1 KDE4 Reloaded: Includes KDE 4.2.2 and 11.1 Updates

2009-05-01T20:57:31+00:00

While 11.2 is still months away there’s still plenty of activity going on with openSUSE. In addition to last week’s milestone release, you can also get your hands on openSUSE 11.1 Reloaded. This is a respin of openSUSE 11.1, including KDE 4.2.2 packages and updates to 11.1.

This is an installable live CD that features the KDE 4.2.2 packages from the openSUSE Build Service repo. The live CD was created by Stephan ‘Beineri’ Binner, and is useful for people who want to test out KDE 4.2 and users who are doing new installs and want the most recent openSUSE updates straight out of the box.

See the KDE 4.2.2 announcement for more information on the improvements and new features in KDE 4.2.2.

Some features in openSUSE’s distribution of KDE differ slightly from a stock install of KDE. The “cashew” (Toolbox) is not enabled by default. It ships with the “Aya” theme and includes some bugfixes and enhancements over the stock 4.2.2 release. The Reloaded live CD also defaults to the KDE4 versions of Amarok (2.0.2) and Digikam (0.10).

A Note of Caution

Please note that this is not an “official” openSUSE release, and has not undergone the same kind of testing that stable releases receive.

Additional openSUSE KDE News

As Will Stephenson points out, if you’re following the KDE:KDE4:Factory:Desktop repository, you’ll soon start getting KDE 4.3 packages. If you want to keep on with the KDE 4.2 packages, use the new KDE:42 repo. The live CD is pre-configured to use this repository, so no need to worry about getting moved to 4.3 unless you change it.

See Important news for openSUSE KDE4 users for more information about KDE repos in the openSUSE Build Service and package naming changes.

Chrysler’s 48% Drop in Sales Is Industry’s Worst

2009-05-01T20:56:58+00:00

The preliminary estimates raise doubts about the likelihood of even a modest recovery in the months ahead.

'Flu' profiteering

2009-05-01T20:56:48+00:00

Mexicans face price hikes amid swine flu panic

Chrysler to close 5 more plants; court case begins (AP)

2009-05-01T20:56:40+00:00

Attorneys for Chrysler LLC said the company will file a motion by Saturday morning to sell substantially all of its assets to Italian automaker Fiat Group SpA, but that won't include eight plants, including five that the automaker revealed it will shutter by the end of next year.

Swine flu or not, many workers can't stay home

2009-05-01T20:55:28+00:00

NEW YORK (AP) -- You wake up one morning and you're feeling achy and feverish. The directions from health officials battling swine flu are clear: Stay home from work. Don't risk infecting others. And certainly don't send a sick kid to school....

Swine flu or not, many workers can't stay home (AP)

2009-05-01T20:55:26+00:00

Brazil ADRs Rally on Economic Outlook; Petrobras, Vale Gain - Bloomberg

2009-05-01T20:55:18+00:00

Upstream Online

Brazil ADRs Rally on Economic Outlook; Petrobras, Vale Gain
Bloomberg - Allen Wan
By Allen Wan May 1 (Bloomberg) -- Brazilian stocks trading in the US rose to the highest in seven months, led by Cia. Vale do Rio Doce and Petroleo Brasileiro SA, as commodity prices rallied on the prospect the global recession will end later this year ...
CORRECT:Brazil Petrobras, Partners Start Tests At Tupi Oil Field Wall Street Journal
Brazil Petrobras Completes Buy Of ExxonMobil's Chile Assets CNNMoney.com
Bloomberg - Wall Street Journal - Wall Street Journal - Wall Street Journal
all 89 news articles

Swine flu lowers pomp level at college graduations

2009-05-01T20:50:47+00:00

BOSTON (AP) -- Miranda Smith is an only child and an honor student. So it was with great anticipation that her mom, aunt and grandparents planned to drive for hours to her graduation ceremony at Cisco Junior College in central Texas....

Swine flu lowers pomp level at college graduations (AP)

2009-05-01T20:50:43+00:00

GM, Chrysler Woes Weigh On Industry; Recovery Hopes Delayed - CNNMoney.com

2009-05-01T20:48:14+00:00

FOXNews

GM, Chrysler Woes Weigh On Industry; Recovery Hopes Delayed
CNNMoney.com
DETROIT -(Dow Jones)- US vehicle sales were worse than expected in April, muting optimism that the beleaguered auto industry is poised to rebound even amid turmoil at General Motors Corp.
Video: Barack Obama announces Chrysler to file for bankruptcy ITN NEWS
Comment by Gary Chaison Prof. of Industrial Relations, Clark University
Reuters - Wall Street Journal - Detroit Free Press
all 11,208 news articles

Research: Birds can dance to music - United Press International

2009-05-01T20:45:59+00:00

CBBC Newsround

Research: Birds can dance to music
United Press International
SAN DIEGO, May 1 (UPI) -- Two US studies suggest parrots and other species of bird can keep rhythm with musical beats. Dr. Aniruddh Patel, a researcher at The Neurosciences Institute in San Diego and lead author of one of the studies, said he and his ...
This Cockatoo Can Shake His Tail Feathers NPR
Parrots Can Dance Slashdot
National Geographic - CNN - Women on the Web - Telegraph.co.uk
all 240 news articles

Major wholesale bank shuttered - CNNMoney.com

2009-05-01T20:44:48+00:00

WJBF-TV

Major wholesale bank shuttered
CNNMoney.com - Catherine Clifford
By Catherine Clifford, CNNMoney.com staff writer The government is engaged in a far-reaching - and expensive - effort to rescue the economy.
US regulators seize Silverton commercial bank Reuters
Silverton Bank in Atlanta Seized by Regulator Amid Recession Bloomberg
MarketWatch - Bizjournals.com - The Business Insider - CFO.com Magazine
all 127 news articles

Sailor From Freetown Killed In Iraq

2009-05-01T20:44:20+00:00

A sailor from Freetown has been killed in Iraq.

Keith Packard: SDCC-Bug-Fixing

2009-05-01T20:40:50+00:00

To build code for TeleMetrum, we’re using SDCC, the Small Device C Compiler as the CPU inside the cc1111 is an 8051 clone, an 8-bit microprocessor for which SDCC has excellent support (more about the flight software later).

SDCC version 2.9.0 was recently uploaded to Debian unstable, and when I built our flight software with the new version, I discovered a bug in the display of strings formatted by printf. First assuming that the bug was in my source code, I tried to figure out what I’d done wrong, but then I eventually looked that the 8051 assembly output (ick) and discovered that the compiler was generating the wrong code for pointers when passed to a varargs function. A bit of hacking and I soon had a short test case that demonstrated the bug:

extern void f(char *x, ...);

void
func(__xdata char *s)
{
    f("hi", s);
}

I filed a brief bug report and attached the test case, then went to download the current source code to see if I couldn’t uncover the source of the bug. I have to say that reading through the SDCC source code was reasonably pleasant; a competent compiler in very little code that was easy to grasp. I eventually located the bug, and discovered that it was from a change made last December as part of a pointer-related optimization, and I posted a patch that I found would fix the specific problem I had found.

The nicest part came next — once I’d posted the patch, a reasonably lively discussion between Maarten Brock, Borut Ražem and Raphael Neider came to a quick concensus about what the desired behavior in this case would be.

Then, Maarten Brock applied my patch to the project and, much to my amazement, he included a regression test that verified the desired behaviour in both the case that I had uncovered and several other cases as well.

I just want to applaud these developers for building a great compiler and running a great project.

US car sales continue to suffer

2009-05-01T20:40:33+00:00

US car sales continued to struggle in April as cash-conscious consumers remained reluctant to buy new vehicles

US car sales continue to suffer

2009-05-01T20:40:33+00:00

US car sales continued to struggle in April as cash-conscious consumers remained reluctant to buy new vehicles

The Aporkalypse: Researchers Want Your Help

2009-05-01T20:39:36+00:00

Maggie Koerth-Baker is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. A freelance science and health journalist, Maggie lives in Minneapolis, brain dumps on Twitter, and writes quite often for mental_floss magazine.

A Stanford team that's studying the public's knowledge of, and response to, H1N1 flu, has a survey and they're looking for willing participants to fill it out. Here's team member Marcel Salathé:

There is a possibility that the situation might develop into a pandemic if the virus continues to spread around the globe. The news media report excessively about this threat, and while health officials urge people to stay calm, there is an increased level of anxiety in the population.
Models have predicted that when a disease breaks out, changes in behavior in response to an outbreak, and in particular in response to information about an outbreak, can alter the progression of an epidemic. While this makes intuitive sense, there is no good data to test such a hypothesis. One of the major problems is that emotional reactions and behavioral response to an epidemic is generally assessed quite some time after the epidemic has fizzled out."

Short version: They're trying to figure out whether the info dump about H1N1 flu that you're getting from the media and the Web might really be enough to educate us all right out of a pandemic. I know that theory has come up in the comments threads on my previous flu postings. Let's help find out it if it works!

Take the survey here

EDIT: Marcel Salathé answers a couple of reader questions from the comments thread here. First, about when the results will come out and how you can see them:

There are a number of options. We will collect data while the epidemic runs its course - how long that's going to take is unpredictable, so I cannot really say more about the timeline - we just don't know yet. But we're constantly monitoring the data, and once we start finding interesting patterns we will certainly publish those quickly and make them open access. Feel free to publish my Stanford email address, and people who want to the results can send me an email."

Second, are Boing Boing readers completely screwing up the data by virtue of their savvyness? Salathé says it's a concern, but he doesn't think it will mess things up too badly, and he needs the volume of response more:

I am relatively confident that once we have a large enough sample we will get a good feeling for the average level of concern in the population. Yes, it might be that the ones responding to the survey are not the ones most panicky. On the other hand, one could also make the argument that people who are absolutely unruffled and calm might not be bothered to take the survey either. There can always be bias in any direction. In principle, any online survey has the potential for bias (by the fact alone that the survey is online) - but with a large enough sample one can avoid most of the problems regarding bias."

Boing Boing also isn't the only large-volume return place Salathé has published the survey link, so he's confident his results won't be all-BB, all the time. He does say that if you've got suggestions on more places to publish the survey link that are likely to be BB's polar opposite, you should contact him.

Can't see the video? Click here

Army: 55 militants killed in Pakistan fighting

2009-05-01T20:38:57+00:00

ISLAMABAD (AP) -- Pakistani troops backed by attack helicopters stepped up an operation to push the Taliban farther away from the capital Friday, saying they killed at least 55 fighters. But the government was resisting Western pressure to expand the crackdown and abandon peace talks with militants who want to impose their brand of Islam across this nuclear-armed country....

Souter's home state glad to have him back

2009-05-01T20:38:42+00:00

WEARE, N.H. (AP) -- When U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter retires this summer, you won't find him living in a beachfront condo or lakeside retreat....

Is Mobile Next For Hulu? - ChannelWeb

2009-05-01T20:37:08+00:00

Is Mobile Next For Hulu?
ChannelWeb
Hulu's deal with Disney, in which Disney bought a 30 percent stake in Hulu, adds a powerhouse to the online video site's already formidable content lineup -- so where does Hulu go from here?
Will streaming television kill the iTunes Store? Macworld
What Disney-Hulu Means for Apple BusinessWeek
DVICE - New York Times - Wall Street Journal - Media Buyer Planner
all 633 news articles

Asia Reports First Case of Swine Flu, in Hong Kong

2009-05-01T20:35:23+00:00

The arrival of a Mexican traveler with the flu at a Hong Kong hospital re-awoke memories of the SARS outbreak. <a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=e4da274075fca687346ee6792288ab1e&p=1"><img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=e4da274075fca687346ee6792288ab1e&p=1"/></a>

New jury problem surfaces in Fla. terror trial

2009-05-01T20:34:32+00:00

MIAMI (AP) -- A new jury problem surfaced Friday in the terrorism conspiracy trial of six men when panel members asked a federal judge to remove a juror because she supposedly refused to deliberate....

Forest Service closes caves to stop bat fungus

2009-05-01T20:33:47+00:00

$300K settlement in discrimination suit against Gov. David Paterson - New York Daily News

2009-05-01T20:32:45+00:00

New York Daily News

$300K settlement in discrimination suit against Gov. David Paterson
New York Daily News
AP ALBANY, NY - A racial discrimination suit stemming from Gov. David Paterson's takeover of the state Senate's Democratic minority in 2003 has been settled for $300000.
$300K settlement in Paterson discrimination suit WTEN
Democrat Governor Of New York Pays $300000 To Settle ... Reiten Television KXMB Bismarck
American Spectator - Nashville Scene
all 164 news articles

Obama to host Afghan, Pakistan summit Wednesday - AFP

2009-05-01T20:31:13+00:00

Obama to host Afghan, Pakistan summit Wednesday
AFP
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President Barack Obama will host a summit with his Afghan and Pakistani counterparts on Wednesday amid growing US concern over the deteriorating situation in the region, the White House said.
Video: Pakistan and Afghanistan - The Presidency, Ep. 13 U.S. News & World Report
Obama to host Afghan, Pakistani presidents Washington Times
The Associated Press - Xinhua - Monsters and Critics.com - Times of India
all 783 news articles

Arsenal battle lines drawn

2009-05-01T20:29:29+00:00

US sports entrepreneur Stan Kroenke became Arsenal Football Club's largest shareholder after spending up to £50m to lift his stake to 28.3 per cent

Stocks rise on day, week - CNNMoney.com

2009-05-01T20:29:10+00:00

Boston Globe

Stocks rise on day, week
CNNMoney.com
Wall Street manages modest gains on the first day of May as investors consider economic news, profit reports. By Alexandra Twin, CNNMoney.
US Stocks Lower; GM Weak, Industrials And Energy Cos. Rise Wall Street Journal
US Stocks Are Flat After Manufacturing Reports New York Times
Reuters - Bloomberg - MarketWatch - Forbes
all 1,682 news articles

Swine Flu Ancestors Born on U.S. Factory Farms

2009-05-01T20:29:00+00:00

Even if epidemiologists never find "the smoking pig" that originated the swine flu outbreak, genetic analysis shows that the disease sweeping across the world is derived from viruses that arose in American factory farms.

CWU students rally to protest tuition hike

2009-05-01T20:28:47+00:00

ELLENSBURG, Wash. (AP) -- About 300 students at Central Washington University marched across the campus in Ellensburg today and rallied to protest a likely tuition increase....

Hiking editor missing from Va. Appalachian Trail

2009-05-01T20:27:23+00:00

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- More than 100 people are searching for a visually impaired man from Michigan who disappeared while hiking the Appalachian Trail in Virginia....

Hiking editor missing from Va. Appalachian Trail (AP)

2009-05-01T20:27:18+00:00

AP - More than 100 people are searching for a visually impaired man from Michigan who disappeared while hiking the Appalachian Trail in Virginia.

Swine flu vaccine

2009-05-01T20:27:15+00:00

How the humble egg plays a vital role in manufacture

YouTube meme becomes scientific study!

2009-05-01T20:26:00+00:00

You may have seen him before: Snowball the Dancing Cockatoo. ScienceNOW Daily News reports on a Current Biology study - a neurobiologist went to study the bird and sees dancing as a phenomenon connected to the ability to imitate sounds. A companion paper looks for dancing ability in a number of animals, but only found it in animals that were able to vocally mimic sounds.

If you haven't watched the video you definitely have have to. If you have... it's worth watching some again. :-)

Pirate Party Banned From Social Networking Site

2009-05-01T20:26:00+00:00

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that as the European Parliament elections loom StudiVZ, Germany's largest social networking site, has opened up to political parties for election campaigning. That is, if you aren't the Pirate Party. "The other political parties were allowed to have a special account to show they are an organization and not an individual. The Pirate Party, however, was not allowed to have one and instead operated on a standard user account registered by an individual. StudiVZ noticed that the Pirate Party account was not a "real person" and despite it having a thriving network with hundreds of followers, it was summarily deleted. This means that it is impossible for the Pirate Party to have a presence at all on the largest social networking site in Germany."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Couple accused of cheating 9-11 fund get new trial (AP)

2009-05-01T20:23:52+00:00

AP - Federal prosecutors are going to try again to convict a former naval officer and his wife of defrauding a fund for the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.

US Supreme Court judge to retire

2009-05-01T20:22:35+00:00

US Supreme Court Justice David Souter is to step down at the end of the court's term in June, President Barack Obama confirms.

Tomboy, Gnote, and the limits of forks

2009-05-01T20:22:34+00:00

Your editor has long been a user of the Tomboy note-taking tool. Tomboy makes it easy to gather thoughts, organize them, and pull them up on demand; it is, beyond doubt, a useful productivity tool. But all is not perfect with Tomboy. Some people have complained about its faults for a while; Hubert Figuiere, instead, chose to do something about it in the form of the Gnote utility. So now, of course, people are complaining about Gnote instead. Click below (subscribers only) for a look at Gnote and the discussion it has started.

BB Video: "Manifestations," An Animated Love Story, by Giles Timms

2009-05-01T20:22:19+00:00

(Download the MP4 here, or watch on YouTube.) Today's edition of Boing Boing Video is an animated short by Giles Timms -- "Manifestations" stars a cartoon critter named Mr. Chip who seeks anime love in a psychedelic, ever-morphing virtual world. The music is by Welsh composer Ceri Frost. Mr. Chip also stars in a mini Flash game which you can play here.

RSS feed for new episodes here, YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video. (Special thanks to Boing Boing's video hosting partner Episodic).

BB VIDEO Q&A: ANIMATOR GILES TIMMS

BBV: Where are you based, and what do you do?

Giles: At the moment I live in Santa Monica, LA and attend the Animation Workshop at UCLA's Department of Theater, Film and Television. So I'm a student in the MFA program, but I also work freelance, such as the recent Deathcab for Cutie "Grapevine Fires" video with Walter Robot Studios.

BBV: What is the story behind this lovely animation?

Giles: That it's important for us to find love in this world, whoever and wherever we may be. And that love can exist between the most unlikely of characters, such as the cartoon creature Mr. Chip and the Tadahiro Uesugi inspired girly girl. Love knows no boundaries.

BBV: I love the cute little boxy central character. Who is he, and what's his story?

Giles: The little green guy is Mr. Chip. He originally appeared as the central character in a mini puzzle flash game that I made. Mr. Chip is quite small and unassuming, but he has the heart of a lion and isn't afraid to go after what he seeks. And he can be very resourceful in a MacGyver sort of way. It was these qualities that led to his development as the main character in Manifestations.

(Interview continues after the jump)

BBV: What are some of the sources of visual or cultural inspiration that drive your work?

Giles: Visually I'm inspired by work that is textural, stylized and painterly. So for animators I like Yuriy Norshteyn, Igor Kovalyov and Koji Yamamura. I also reference a lot of comic book artists and illustrators, such as Rhode Montijo, Mike Mignola and Ashley Wood for similar stylistic inspiration.

Culturally, history and its motifs are important so that my work can seem grounded in something real even if quite surreal. I'm particularly inspired by history that shows us the indomitable human spirit rising above tragedy.

Recently I've met lots of people both in LA and at UCLA who have helped me find my voice as an artist and filmmaker but the four biggest influences have been Ceri Frost, Walter Robot, Celia Mercer and Howard Suber. Ceri is a Welsh composer who has been very generous with his music and support, both of which have helped me grow as an artist. I also had the good fortune to take a class from Bill, of Walter Robot Studios, at UCLA and work first hand with him and Chris on their 'Grapevine Fires' music video. Celia Mercer is the Area Head of the MFA program at UCLA and has been very supportive of my trials in animation and filmmaking. Also, Howard Suber, Professor Emeritus at UCLA, is an amazing guy whose lectures, anecdotes and insights inspire me as an artist (I like to think of him as the Yoda of UCLA).

And lastly, my girlfriend =)

BBV: What are you working on now?

Giles: Another animated short with music by Ceri Frost, for a song called 'Dead All Along' with dancing bones and skeletons. And trying to graduate in June!

Tamiflu stockpiles vary widely throughout world

2009-05-01T20:19:55+00:00

LONDON (AP) -- Poor countries likely to suffer most in a swine flu outbreak have the smallest stockpiles of antiviral medicines to fight it....

Tweexchange Is The Ultimate Twitter Name Marketplace - Washington Post

2009-05-01T20:19:33+00:00

Tweexchange Is The Ultimate Twitter Name Marketplace
Washington Post
Twitter handles are quickly becoming as desirable as domains and Tweexchange hopes to capitalize on this by providing a marketplace for Twitter members to exchange, buy or find Twitter usernames from other existing members.
Why Most Twitter Users Give Up PC World
Twitter breach gives behind-the-scenes Obama peek Register
TechNewsWorld - The Associated Press - PC Magazine - Bizjournals.com
all 292 news articles

Recession fires worldwide May Day rallies (AFP)

2009-05-01T20:19:10+00:00

Couple arrested for sex on lawn at Windsor Castle

2009-05-01T20:17:51+00:00

LONDON (AP) -- Queen Elizabeth II was at home at Windsor Castle, the sentries who guard her were on duty, and the large park surrounding the magnificent building was full of tourists on a Sunday afternoon. So it didn't take long for people to realize that something was out of order when an inebriated couple arrived from a nearby restaurant and began having sex on a grass bank outside the castle, according to witnesses....

Paul W. Frields: Presto change-o.

2009-05-01T20:15:49+00:00

# yum update Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, presto, refresh-packagekit … Size of all updates downloaded from Presto-enabled repositories: 2.4M Size of updates that would have been downloaded if Presto wasn’t enabled: 24M This is a savings of 90 percent

Now that’s sweet. That was an update from yesterday’s Rawhide to today. The Presto feature in Fedora 11 will allow your software updates to simply take less time than ever before. The above may not be representative of every single usage, but I didn’t take any time to craft a scenario from scratch. All I did was to run this command:

su -c 'yum install yum-presto'

Then I ran a yum update as usual. Of course, the graphical utility PackageKit also picks up this improvement, since it’s an elegant wrapper around yum. In future releases, we may turn on the Presto feature by default.

Yet another reason to look forward to Fedora 11!

Paratrooper to be tried in another soldier's death

2009-05-01T20:14:03+00:00

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- One of seven soldiers accused in the death of a fellow paratrooper who had to be restrained after becoming unruly outside a Fayetteville bar will go on trial, Fort Bragg officials said Friday....

Thomas Vander Stichele: Hidden Track One Audio: check

2009-05-01T20:12:01+00:00

After another day of on-and-off hacking, wrapping cdrdao and cdparanoia binaries in my task interfaces I mentioned before, I inserted a CD by Bloc Party called ‘Silent Alarm’, ran a command, and saw the following output on my screen:
[gst-git] [thomas@ana trunk]$ PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:`pwd` python examples/readhtoa.py Found Hidden Track One Audio from frame 0 to 15220 runner done Checksums match [gst-git] [thomas@ana trunk]$ ls -l track00.wav -rw----- 1 thomas thomas 35797484 2009-05-01 21:56 track00.wav

I’m going to guess this is the first piece of Linux code that is able to automatically find and rip the hidden track at the start of a CD. (Feel free to correct me using your choice of alliterative insult if I am wrong!)

It’s time to start collecting all my new-found wisdom in something more permanently written down, but that will be for tomorrow.

Shuttle program shutdown means hundreds of pink slips, starting today

2009-05-01T20:12:00+00:00

The space shuttle, the iconic orbiter that has been at the core of NASA's manned spaceflight program for decades, is headed into retirement next year, a shutdown process that will likely mean thousands of job losses. The formal phaseout process resumed today after a temporary hold initiated last year to give the incoming president time to reconsider the shuttle's fate. But the Obama administration has not intervened, and NASA announced that about 160 pink slips will be handed out today with many more to come over the next few months. [More]

Regular flu shots this fall, maybe swine jab too - The Associated Press

2009-05-01T20:11:14+00:00

MiamiHerald.com

Regular flu shots this fall, maybe swine jab too
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - Americans might have to line up twice next winter for flu shots - once for the regular jab and again later for swine flu protection.
Video: Work in progress to find flu vaccine WIVB
Swine flu genetics suggest a vaccine is possible Science News
Reuters - Washington Post - Inland Empire News - Forbes
all 1,501 news articles

In Focus: Mexicans Sweeping The Nation

2009-05-01T20:10:32+00:00

News In Photos

Bank stress tests to clarify U.S. credit crisis (Reuters)

2009-05-01T20:09:45+00:00

The true dimensions of the U.S. credit crisis will become much clearer next week with the release of results from unprecedented government "stress tests" of the nation's 19 largest banks and their capital needs.

Man killed outside prison gates

2009-05-01T20:07:46+00:00

A major police hunt has begun after a man was shot dead outside Wandsworth Prison in south-west London.

Fedora Videos: Ubuntu Podcast Episode #26

2009-05-01T20:06:34+00:00

David Nalley, a Fedora Ambassador, joins us to discuss the upcoming SouthEast Linux Fest, and getting a free OLPC to help develop a 4th grade math curriculum on them..

This item belongs to: movies/opensource_movies.

This item has files of the following types: 512Kb MPEG4, Animated GIF, Cinepack, Metadata, Ogg Video, Thumbnail

L.A. teachers union to announce one-day strike to fight layoffs - Los Angeles Times

2009-05-01T20:05:38+00:00

MyFox Los Angeles

L.A. teachers union to announce one-day strike to fight layoffs
Los Angeles Times - Howard Blume
The union representing Los Angeles teachers is moments away from announcing plans for a one-day strike on May 15 to protest the pending layoffs of as many as 3500 teachers.
Staff Editorial Daily Sundial
Nearly 1400 sign up for retirement at Los Angeles Unified School ... Los Angeles Daily News
California Healthline - L.A. Watts Times (subscription) - Los Angeles Times - Los Angeles Daily News
all 21 news articles

Chrysler in doomsday jobs warning

2009-05-01T20:04:55+00:00

Chrysler began its stint in bankruptcy court wiith a plea for haste and a warning that hundreds of thousands of jobs could be lost if it cannot execute its proposed restructuring within two months

Allergan to Tend to Botox Label; Net Falls 64% - Wall Street Journal

2009-05-01T20:02:32+00:00

RTT News

Allergan to Tend to Botox Label; Net Falls 64%
Wall Street Journal - Kelly Nolan
By KELLY NOLAN Allergan Inc. said Friday it will work with the US Food and Drug Administration to update labeling on Botox, a day after the agency ordered stronger warnings for the anti-wrinkle drug.
BIOTECH STOCKS MarketWatch
Allergan 1Q profit falls on charges, sales drop Forbes
Bizjournals.com - Schaeffers Research - Trading Markets (press release) - StreetInsider.com (subscription)
all 52 news articles

Washington cuts swimming programs

2009-05-01T20:01:41+00:00

SEATTLE (AP) -- The University of Washington is cutting its men's and women's swimming programs....

Mobile Phone Sales Figures Not Pretty - BusinessWeek

2009-05-01T20:00:20+00:00

ITProPortal

Mobile Phone Sales Figures Not Pretty
BusinessWeek - Andy Reinhardt
Two market research companies, IDC and Strategy Analytics, released their figures on Apr. 30 for first-quarter mobile phone sales.
Global Q1 mobile mkt shrank at fastest ever pace Reuters
Mobile Phone Shipments To Fall By 13 Percent Says Analysts ITProPortal
FierceWireless - TMCnet - IT PRO - EE Times Deutschland
all 44 news articles

Game-changing call to college football: Playoff

2009-05-01T19:59:44+00:00

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Tackling an issue sure to rouse sports fans, lawmakers pressed college football officials Friday to switch the Bowl Championship Series to a playoff, with one Texas Republican likening the current system to communism and joking it should be labeled "BS," not "BCS."...

Extreme penalties for garden variety crimes hurt taxpayers

2009-05-01T19:59:31+00:00

Extreme penalties for garden variety crimes hurts Texas and Texas taxpayers

WSU budget plan includes 370 job cuts - Seattle Post Intelligencer

2009-05-01T19:57:34+00:00

KLEW

WSU budget plan includes 370 job cuts
Seattle Post Intelligencer - Nicholas K. Geranios
By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS AP WRITER SPOKANE, Wash. -- Washington State University will cut 371 jobs and eliminate several academic programs to make up a $54 million deficit in its budget for the next two years, the school said Friday.
WSU says 370 jobs will be cut Moscow-Pullman Daily News
WSU to cut programs, jobs The Spokesman Review
Capital Press (subscription) - The Daily Evergreen
all 30 news articles

Are war casualties morally equivalent to abortion deaths? - USA Today

2009-05-01T19:57:17+00:00

Catholic News Agency

Are war casualties morally equivalent to abortion deaths?
USA Today
My post yesterday on the latest developments in the Notre Dame commencement flap, has prompted an instructive range of responses. Two in particular take me to task for an observation about former ambassador to the Vatican Mary Ann Glendon.
Some say anti-abortion protests have gone too far WSBT-TV
Notre Dame won't give top honor amid Obama protest The Associated Press
Fort Wayne Journal Gazette - Catholic News Agency - Catholic Culture - Boston Globe
all 615 news articles

Obama Vows ‘Independent' Replacement for Souter - New York Times

2009-05-01T19:56:24+00:00

Obama Vows ‘Independent' Replacement for Souter
New York Times - Jim Wilson
President Obama, with, from left, his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, White House Counsel Greg Craig and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, spoke on Friday about the upcoming retirement of Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter.
Video: Pres. Obama on Souter Retirement C-SPAN
Conservatives prepare for Supreme battle CNN
Washington Post - The Associated Press - NPR - Reuters
all 3,321 news articles

Manufacturing declines at slower rate in April (AP)

2009-05-01T19:53:31+00:00

U.S. manufacturing activity in April posted its best showing since September, when the financial crisis erupted. The performance was driven by a rise in new orders reflecting higher business and consumer spending.

Swine Flu Suspected in Thousands, With ‘Less Severe' Illness - Bloomberg

2009-05-01T19:53:12+00:00

New Zealand Herald

Swine Flu Suspected in Thousands, With ‘Less Severe' Illness
Bloomberg - Tom Randall
By Tom Randall May 1 (Bloomberg) -- Swine flu reached 14 countries on three continents, killing at a slower rate than past global outbreaks, world health officials said.
Hong Kong seals off hotel where H1N1 flu found Reuters
Hong Kong to Quarantine 300 at Hotel for Week After Flu Confirmed Wall Street Journal
HotelChatter - United Press International - NewsHour - Bloomberg
all 2,050 news articles

Flir's 1st-quarter profit jumps 49 pct on sales - Forbes

2009-05-01T19:52:57+00:00

Flir's 1st-quarter profit jumps 49 pct on sales
Forbes
AP , 05.01.09, 03:40 PM EDT Flir Systems Inc., which makes infrared imaging cameras for commercial and military use, said Friday its fourth-quarter profit rose 49 percent on higher sales, and reaffirmed its 2009 profit outlook.
Flir bucks the trends, reports large profit Bizjournals.com
Flir Posts Strong Q1 Photonics.com
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all 29 news articles

Alleged Nazi Demjanjuk cleared for deportation

2009-05-01T19:52:22+00:00

Tchenguiz calls EGM at Bramdean fund

2009-05-01T19:52:20+00:00

The property entrepreneur, through his Elsina vehicle, has called an extraordinary general meeting at Bramdean Alternatives, the investment fund managed by Nicola Horlick's Bramdean Asset Management

Fed to launch program bolstering commercial loans - MarketWatch

2009-05-01T19:51:24+00:00

Fed to launch program bolstering commercial loans
MarketWatch - Ronald D. Orol
By Ronald D. Orol, MarketWatch WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The Federal Reserve announced Friday it will take a key consumer-lending program and expanded it to help jump-start the commercial real-estate lending industry.
New TALF program launches in June The Associated Press
How Risky is the Fed Balance Sheet? Zacks.com
Briefing.com - Bloomberg - Wall Street Journal - Briefing.com
all 262 news articles

Chrysler to close 5 more plants; court case begins

2009-05-01T19:48:18+00:00

NEW YORK (AP) -- Attorneys for Chrysler LLC said the company will file a motion by Saturday morning to sell substantially all of its assets to Italian automaker Fiat Group SpA, but that won't include eight plants, including five that the automaker revealed it will shutter by the end of next year....

Thieves steal sheep worth £20,000

2009-05-01T19:48:16+00:00

More than 100 sheep worth a total of about £20,000 are stolen from a farm near Ballygally in County Antrim.

Stocks rise after mixed economic, earnings news (AP)

2009-05-01T19:47:38+00:00

Traders put in more of the "buy" orders Friday that propelled the market in April to its best one-month performance in nine years.

Bank ‘Stress Test’ Results Due Next Thursday

2009-05-01T19:46:18+00:00

The release was pushed back, in part because some of the banks still disagree with the government’s conclusions.

Obama's Press Conference Draws 28.8 Million - Television Broadcast

2009-05-01T19:45:22+00:00

E! Online

Obama's Press Conference Draws 28.8 Million
Television Broadcast
NEW YORK: Nielsen said the president's Wednesday prime-time press conference drew an audience of 28.8 million people. The event marked his 100 th day in office and pulled in an 18.8 household rating on 10 TV networks at 8 pm Eastern Standard Time.
Fox Beats Obama California Chronicle
Obama Presser: Diminishing Returns? TIME
NewsMax.com - E! Online - New York Times Blogs - Hot Air
all 55 news articles

Stores see shelves empty of sanitizers, face masks (AP)

2009-05-01T19:44:24+00:00

Health officials are saying prevention and preparation are key to fighting swine flu, and if empty store shelves where disinfectants and face masks once sat are a sign, consumers are taking that advice to heart.

AP: Most states have fewer drugs than feds suggest

2009-05-01T19:43:58+00:00

BALTIMORE (AP) -- With a swine flu outbreak spreading across the nation, more than half the states have yet to stockpile the number of flu-treatment doses recommended by the federal government, an Associated Press survey found....

AP: Most states have fewer drugs than feds suggest (AP)

2009-05-01T19:43:43+00:00

DryShips posts Q1 profit before items, shares rise - Forbes

2009-05-01T19:43:40+00:00

DryShips posts Q1 profit before items, shares rise
Forbes - Sakthi Prasad, Ajay Kamalakaran
By Sakthi Prasad BANGALORE, May 1 (Reuters) - Greek dry bulk carrier DryShips Inc posted a quarterly profit, before one-time items, beating maket estimates, helped by lower operating costs, and also due to long-term charter contracts that partly ...
dryships Up With Better-Than-Expected 1Q, Boosts Shippers Wall Street Journal
Earnings roundup: DryShips posts loss on charge CanadianBusiness.com
CNNMoney.com (press release) - Fairplay (subscription) - StreetInsider.com (subscription)
all 31 news articles

Gov't official: bank test results to come Thursday (AP)

2009-05-01T19:43:25+00:00

The Federal Reserve will release results Thursday of "stress tests" for the 19 large banks at the center of the nation's financial crisis. The results will shed light on which banks may need government support to withstand a more severe recession.

Fresh signs of recovery bolster Wall Street (Reuters)

2009-05-01T19:42:07+00:00

U.S. stocks rose on Friday as surging oil prices pushed energy shares higher and fresh economic data suggested key parts of the economy could be stabilizing.

FTC Backs Off Red Flag Rules Again

2009-05-01T19:41:00+00:00

coondoggie writes to tell us that the Federal Trade Commission has backed off of the new Red Flag Rule designed to protect consumer information yet again. Complaining about cost of implementation, the enforcement date of the rule has been pushed back to August 1, 2009 to give businesses and institutions time to implement identity theft prevention programs. "The FTC, federal bank regulatory agencies, and the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) issued the Red Flags Rules as part of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions (FACT) Act of 2003. The final rules require financial and credit institutions that hold any consumer account, or other account for which there is a reasonably foreseeable risk of identity theft, to develop and implement an Identity Theft Prevention Program for combating identity theft in connection with new and existing accounts, the FTC said."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New Justice may reignite abortion fight

2009-05-01T19:40:50+00:00

Obama’s first pick could reignite abortion fights.

Study Links Air Pollution and Poisoned Seafood

2009-05-01T19:38:00+00:00

A federal study released today explains for the first time the link between global mercury emissions and the contamination of tuna and other marine life in the North Pacific Ocean. [More]

Apple: The low-price leader? - Macworld

2009-05-01T19:37:29+00:00

TrustedReviews

Apple: The low-price leader?
Macworld - Jason Snell
by Jason Snell, Macworld.com This morning all the ads on my radio were about sales, deals, and other ways to save money (by spending it).
Apple Cutting imac and macbook Prices, Sources Says eWeek
Apple files patent for improving aesthetics of carbon fiber Ars Technica
Mac Rumors - CIO Today - Washington Post - ChannelWeb
all 94 news articles

Feds drop charges against pro-Israel lobbyists

2009-05-01T19:34:01+00:00

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) -- Prosecutors moved Friday to dismiss all charges against two former pro-Israel lobbyists accused of disclosing U.S. defense secrets, ending a four-year legal battle that promised to put former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other Bush administration insiders on the witness stand....

Feds drop charges against pro-Israel lobbyists (AP)

2009-05-01T19:33:56+00:00

Swine flu hits Asia as Mexico shuts down to halt spread (AFP)

2009-05-01T19:30:36+00:00

UK slides down tax-friendly rankings

2009-05-01T19:29:25+00:00

The UK is rapidly sliding down the ranks of the world's tax-friendly destinations as new higher rates mean entrepreneurs and business owners could be better off in traditional offshore havens and many other countries around the world

Remarks by the President at Naturalization Ceremony for Active Duty Service Members

2009-05-01T19:29:00+00:00

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary
___________________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release May 1, 2009

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
AT NATURALIZATION CEREMONY
FOR ACTIVE DUTY SERVICE MEMBERS

East Room

1:27 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Thank you so much. This is a lot of fun. This makes so much of the hard work we do worth it, to see this ceremony here today. It is my honor and my personal pleasure to be the first to address you as my fellow Americans. (Applause.) And welcome to your White House. (Applause.) Now, I know this day carries a lot of meaning not only for you, but for your family members and your fellow service members who join you today.

Each of you has a unique story to tell about the journey that led you here. You hail from every corner of the Earth -- from Southeast Asia to Central Europe, from West Africa to South America. Some of you came to this country as young children, because your parents wanted to give you a better life in the land of opportunity. Others traveled here as adults, enduring hardship and sacrifice, to provide for your own families.

But all of you have one thing in common: You're here because you have not merely chosen to live in this country; you've chosen to serve this country.

You're here for the same reason that Jeonathan Zapata is here. Jeonathan recently returned from serving as part of our efforts in Afghanistan. He actually helped man the 400,000th aircraft landing aboard the USS Kitty Hawk. And Jeonathan wanted to serve the country he considers his own -- even though he was not yet a citizen -- because America had been so good to him, from the time he came here from Nicaragua as a child. "By serving in the military," Jeonathan says, "I can also give back to the U.S."

So, Jeonathan, I'd like you to stand. (Applause.)

You're here for the same reason -- you can sit down now, Jeonathan -- (applause.) You're here for the same reason that Chryshann Pierre is here. Chryshann, where are you? There you are. (Applause.) Chryshann is an Army Specialist returning from service in Iraq late last year. Originally she joined the military because she wanted to provide stability for her three children. But then she discovered something she did not expect: She loves being in the Army. (Laughter.) In fact, she even said that she loved basic training. Chryshann, you've got to be pretty tough to love basic training. (Laughter.)

You all have your own stories -- you can sit down, Chryshann -- (applause.) You all have your own stories of how you came to this country. And you all have your own personal reasons for why you joined the military. But in the service that you render, in the sacrifices that each of you have made and will continue to make, in the commitment you've shown to your adopted nation, you're part of a larger story -- America's story.

For more than two centuries, this nation has been a beacon of hope and opportunity -- a place that has drawn enterprising men and women from around the world who have sought to build a life as good as their talents and their hard work would allow. And generation after generation of immigrants have come to these shores because they believe that in America all things are possible.

So you are not only living examples of that promise; you're also serving to defend that promise for future generations. And your service reminds all of us that much of the strength of this country is drawn from those who have chosen to call it home. It's not lost on me or anybody here today that at a time when we face an economic crisis born in many ways of irresponsibility, there are those who are actively pursuing greater responsibility.

And one person here today who fits that description well enough is Jeanne Ebongue Tapo -- right here. She grew up in a poor family in Gabon, Africa, the daughter of a single mother raising five children by herself. And Jeanne immigrated to the United States to provide for her family and to pursue her dream of becoming a dentist. And that's why she joined the Navy. And she hoped she'd have the opportunity to work and see the world and also earn her education.

And that's exactly what she has been able to do. She has started college; she's had the chance to travel. And even though she's had to make sacrifices to be apart from her loved ones, the people she's met in the Navy have become like a "family away from home." And she's had the chance to be a part of what it feels like -- what feels like a small community and, at the same time, to be part of something much larger than herself. So Jeanne, thank you. (Applause.)

Despite all the -- all that she's faced, despite all the obstacles that she's overcome, Jeanne has made it her mission to serve others. "At the end of the day," she said, "the only thing that matters is that I helped."

As our newest Americans, all of you remind us just how precious our citizenship is -- of how much it's worth and why it's worth protecting. You all remind us that citizenship is not just a collection of rights, it's also a set of responsibilities; that America's success is not a gift, it is hard-won. It depends on each of us doing our part.

So thank you all for your service. I am extraordinarily proud of you. And your nation is grateful to you.

So now it is also my privilege to present a distinguished American with an award in recognition of the many contributions of naturalized citizens like all of you. It's called the "Outstanding American by Choice" Award. It's given to -- it's given by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and it is my honor to award it to Peter Lemon. And let me tell you a little bit about Peter. Peter was just 19 years old, and a citizen for just seven years, when he and his platoon came under fire in the Tay Ninh Province of Vietnam.

Wounded by shrapnel from a mortar that exploded near his foxhole, Specialist Lemon kept fighting to protect his position against wave after wave of attack. The battle raged for hours. He was wounded a second time, and then a third. But he refused to give up, even leaving his foxhole and exposed himself to enemy fire in order to continue to defend his fellow Rangers.

In fact, once the fight was over, Specialist Lemon refused to be evacuated until others had been taken to a field hospital. And Pete would spend a month in the hospital himself to recover from his injuries. Soon after he returned home, he would be presented with the Medal of Honor by President Nixon.

Today, Peter Lemon is a proud father and a proud veteran -- as well as an author and a filmmaker. And he has devoted his time and energies to talking about what his own experiences have meant to him and what he has learned -- to encourage each and every one of us that the way to make the most of our talents is to make a difference in the lives of others.

His experience is a testament to the men and women who have come to this country to build a better life for themselves and their families -- and who have, by their commitment and contribution, made America a much better place as well.

So it is my honor to present this "Outstanding American by Choice" Award to Peter Lemon. Peter, will you please come here? (Applause.)

(The award is presented.)

One of you might win this someday. You're already well on the way.

END
1:34 P.M. EDT

Lucas Rocha: The GNOME Journal, May Edition

2009-05-01T19:28:53+00:00

The GNOME Journal is back! A brand new issue has just been published! It features an interview with Stormy Peters, the Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation by Jayson Rowe, a review of the Gourmet Recipe Manager application by Sriram Ramkrishna, a look at the GConf Configuation System for developers by Natan Yellin, an Introduction to the Message Indicator for developers by Ken VanDine, and a letter from our editor, Jim Hodapp.

Special thanks goes to Paul Cutler who coordinated the release of this edition!

Read now: http://www.gnomejournal.org

New TALF program launches in June (AP)

2009-05-01T19:26:36+00:00

The Federal Reserve announced Friday that it will launch a much-awaited program in June to bolster commercial real-estate lending.

Google sued for 'stealing' Android name - Register

2009-05-01T19:25:40+00:00

Mobile Today

Google sued for 'stealing' Android name
Register
Google and 47 other international corporations have been sued in a US District Court for trademark infringement over their use of the word "Android.
Google And Others Sued Over ‘Android' For Trademark Infringement MocoNews
Google Sued Over Android Name... But Was It Actually Being Used? Techdirt
Tom's Guide - Digitaltrends.com - Özel Web Tasarım - National Business Review
all 27 news articles

Dow Chemical, Shaw Group and Expedia big movers (AP)

2009-05-01T19:25:30+00:00

Stocks that moved substantially or traded heavily Friday on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Stock Market: NYSE Dow Chemical Co., down 30 cents $15.70

Questions at swine flu's 'ground zero'

2009-05-01T19:25:25+00:00

Villagers in La Gloria, Mexico, stunned at why the virus hit them first, are seeking answers

Court commissioner dances way into retirement

2009-05-01T19:24:37+00:00

PASCO, Wash. (AP) -- For 25 years, Commissioner Bill Platts sat behind the Benton County District Court bench, doling out advice and punishment to shoplifters, speeders and teens caught with alcohol....

Quotes from Newark immigration rally - Philadelphia Inquirer

2009-05-01T19:24:27+00:00

The Associated Press

Quotes from Newark immigration rally
Philadelphia Inquirer
AP AP "This really should be the year we have more people, more motivation, more hope, because the president has offered to work on immigration reform, but the reality is the economy is so bad that people have been saying; 'I can't miss a day of work ...
Immigrants push for reforms at rallies across US The Associated Press
Immigration Agents to Turn Focus to Employers New York Times
Wall Street Journal - WQAD - Americas Quarterly - Boston Globe
all 716 news articles

Cuomo Expands Pension Probe to Unregistered Agents - Bloomberg

2009-05-01T19:22:52+00:00

Cuomo Expands Pension Probe to Unregistered Agents
Bloomberg - Karen Freifeld
By Karen Freifeld May 1 (Bloomberg) -- New York widened its investigation of pension-fund corruption by helping form a multistate task force and issuing subpoenas to probe the role of unregistered and unlicensed agents in arranging for others to manage ...
100 Subpoenas Issued in Pension Case New York Times
NY atty general expands pension pay-to-play probe The Associated Press
WXXI - Wall Street Journal - NBC New York - The Associated Press
all 596 news articles

Baby P man guilty of raping girl

2009-05-01T19:22:37+00:00

The 32-year-old boyfriend of Baby P's mother is convicted of raping a two-year-old girl in north London.

Dad was not the Zodiac, second daughter insists

2009-05-01T19:21:16+00:00

A Southern California woman's accusation this week that her long-dead stepfather was the Zodiac killer just took on a new, strange twist: Another daughter of the man is coming forward to angrily denounce the charge. Janice Hendrickson, who is trying to keep...

mocoNews - Boost Mobile Overwhelmed By Popularity Of $50 Unlimited ... - Washington Post

2009-05-01T19:19:57+00:00

Wireless and Mobile News

mocoNews - Boost Mobile Overwhelmed By Popularity Of $50 Unlimited ...
Washington Post
The good news is that Boost Mobile's new $50 unlimited calling-and-texting plan is attracting hundreds of thousands of new customers.
Boost acknowledges being 'overwhelmed' by unlimited texting ... FierceWireless
Texting delays mar popularity of $50 Boost plan The Associated Press
Forbes - Gerson Lehrman Group
all 101 news articles

Man known for 1988 hostage-taking at NC paper dies

2009-05-01T19:19:41+00:00

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- A man who took 19 hostages at a small-town North Carolina newspaper more than two decades ago in a supposed bid to call attention to government corruption died Friday in prison....

Man known for 1988 hostage-taking at NC paper dies (AP)

2009-05-01T19:19:37+00:00

Obama: We've brought in the 'cavalry'

2009-05-01T19:19:35+00:00

Obama on flu: We've brought in the 'cavalry'

No pay rises in 'broke' Zimbabwe

2009-05-01T19:18:47+00:00

Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai says the government is broke and no state worker is earning more than $100 a month.

Hong Kong 'flu' hotel sealed off

2009-05-01T19:18:33+00:00

About 300 people at a Hong Kong hotel are placed under quarantine after a guest tests positive for swine flu.

Hong Kong 'flu' hotel sealed off

2009-05-01T19:18:33+00:00

More than 300 people at a Hong Kong hotel are placed under quarantine after a Mexican guest tests positive for swine flu.

2 women nominated to lead UC campuses at SF, Davis

2009-05-01T19:17:43+00:00

Two women are being nominated to lead the University of California's campuses in Davis and San Francisco. UC President Mark Yudof said Friday he will recommend Susan Desmond-Hellmann as chancellor at UCSF, and Linda Katehi as chancellor of UC Davis. The...

Bank objections delay stress tests

2009-05-01T19:15:55+00:00

US regulators will delay the release of stress test results for the country's 19 biggest banks until next Thursday, after some of the lenders objected to government demands that they needed to raise more capital.

Atlas Pipeline Partners, L.P. Declares Quarterly Distribution for the First Quarter 2009 (Business Wire)

2009-05-01T19:15:00+00:00

PHILADELPHIA----Atlas Pipeline Partners, L.P. reported today that it has declared a quarterly cash distribution for the first quarter 2009 of $0.15 per common limited partner unit, payable Friday, May 15, 2009 to holders of record as of Monday, May 11, 2009.

FDA acts on risks that Botox effects can spread

2009-05-01T19:15:00+00:00

You might have thought that Botox, the popular drug made from botulinum toxin, was simple spot treatment for everything from frown lines to muscle spasms. But studies have shown that the effects of the drugs can actually spread throughout the body, causing difficulty swallowing and breathing and even death. Acting on this mounting data, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced strict new labeling requirements for Botox and similar products yesterday, reports The New York Times. [More]

Berkshire's Munger Favors ‘100% Ban' on Credit Swaps - Bloomberg

2009-05-01T19:14:01+00:00

guardian.co.uk

Berkshire's Munger Favors ‘100% Ban' on Credit Swaps
Bloomberg - Betty Liu, Shannon D. Harrington, Erik Holm
By Betty Liu, Shannon D. Harrington and Erik Holm May 1 (Bloomberg) -- Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Vice Chairman Charles Munger said he supports an outright ban of credit- default swaps to prevent speculators from profiting on the failure of companies.
What Would You Ask Warren Buffett? New York Times
Here's the Story on Berkshire's Munger Wall Street Journal
guardian.co.uk - Zacks.com - Times Online - Barron's Blogs
all 469 news articles

US allows more firms to seek small business loans - Reuters

2009-05-01T19:11:11+00:00

Entrepreneur

US allows more firms to seek small business loans
Reuters - David Lawder
By David Lawder WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration will allow about 70000 more firms to apply for small business loans guaranteed by the government by temporarily raising size limits for the program, government officials said on Friday.
US Small Business Admin Temporarily Eases Lending Standard Wall Street Journal
SBA to temporarily change size standard for loan Forbes
Automotive News - Western Edition - OregonLive.com - Wall Street Journal Blogs
all 117 news articles

Does waterboarding have long-term physical effects?

2009-05-01T19:10:00+00:00

Last week, The New York Times reported that CIA interrogators subjected 9/11 plotter Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah to a total of 266 episodes of waterboarding between 2002 and 2003. More recently news broke that top Bush administration officials, including Condoleezza Rice and John Ashcroft, had condoned the practice as early as 2002. [More]

Woman fights off knife-wielding muggers at BU

2009-05-01T19:09:58+00:00

Boston University Police report that a woman leaving the rear of 685 Comm. Ave. around 9 p.m. on April 28 was attacked by two would-be muggers:

One of the male suspects was holding a folding pocket knife and demanded the victim's pocketbook. The victim then struggled with the suspects over the purse. The second suspect then displayed a knife by opening the blade and grabbed the victim by her hair. During the scuffle one of the suspects hit the victim in the jaw but she continued to struggle and was able to knock the knife from one of the suspect's hands and both suspects then fled in the direction of Granby St.

Police described the alleged perps as two 20-something white guys, one blond, about 6' tall and weighing 180 pounds:

The victim further stated that both males appeared to be students by their clothes and young appearance.

Favorite Linux Book of All Time: Linux in a Nutshell

2009-05-01T19:08:51+00:00

The Linux Journal's annual Readers' Choice Awards take the pulse of the Linux community, allowing readers to choose their favorites in a number of categories, and write-ins also are accepted. This year, more than 6,000 individuals voted for their favorite Linux solutions—one of the biggest turnouts in in Linux Journal history. And Linux in a Nutshell won the award for Favorite Linux Book of All Time. Our thanks to everyone who voted for this book. We think it's a classic and we're glad that you do, too!

Sweet music of Midland's mill fading

2009-05-01T19:06:40+00:00

MIDLAND, Wash. (AP) -- The wood-planing machines at the Opco Inc. mill in Midland are noisy, but neighbor Leona Turosik, 86, doesn't mind - especially now that the mill might close....

Politicos get taste for Twitter's tiny sound bites (AP)

2009-05-01T19:06:16+00:00

AP - Waiting for the Legislature's budget committee to start its work, state Rep. Robin Vos lacked the power of the majority party, but he did have the power of the tweet.

Obey Arthur Liu: Zürich, Switzerland for the summer (housing? DebConf?)

2009-05-01T19:03:59+00:00

I got a summer internship at Google in Zürich, Switzerland, so I’ll be moving there this summer. Any DD working there ?

I already went to Zürich once last year and it was quite a cool place. I briefly met Cate and I know that there are other DDs there (hi Madduck!). I look forward to meeting more of you.

Now there are two issues I’d like help with, dear Züricher Lazyweb, housing and flight to DebConf.

Can I haz apartment

Looking for an apartment in Zürich seems very very very hard.. So far I only found a few apartment/hotel geared towards rich expats staying for few months (the kind like Citadines). It’s ungodly expensive (like 2200+ CHF a month for one room), but sure available and well placed..

Here’s what I need:

from beginning of June to end of August (I have a friend willing to let me crash in so middle of June is okay)
either one room (for myself) or up to 2 or 3 (I’d be flatsharing then)
about or less than ~1500 CHF for one room, or less than ~2000 CHF for two and ~3000 CHF for three, you got the idea
reasonably close transport-wise from Enge, 20-30 minutes by public transport or, even better bike, would be cool

I don’t have much more criterias, as long as I can find something. We’re about a few dozens Google interns all (desperately) looking for accomodation in Zürich. We’re all good neighbours, don’t party all night and all have very good references. Please contact me if you \<know someone who\>* know something, I’d be very grateful.

Can I haz DebConf

I’m going to DebConf this year in Spain, along with all the Google Summer of Code students who can make it. I’m going to reserve my flight in the next few days. I think I’ll only go to DebConf proper, arriving on the 23rd and leaving on the 31st of July.

Here’s my tentative travel plan:
- Swissair flight 2026, 23rd July, Zürich 12:25 - Madrid 14:45
- Renfe train, 23rd July, Madrid 16:40 - Cáceres 20:02
- DebConf!
- Renfe train, 31st July, Cáceres 5:08 - Madrid 9:43

Either:
- Visit Madrid
- Swissair flight 2033, 2nd August, Madrid 19:45 - Zürich 21:55
Or:
- Air France flight 1301, 2nd August, Madrid 12:40 - Paris 14:45
- Visit home
- SNCF train TGV Lyria 9217, 2nd August, Paris 17:54 - Zürich 22:26

I’m not decided yet on the last point.

So, any of you coming to DebConf from Zürich ?

US Report on Religious Freedom: 'Watch' Cuba, Venezuela - Voice of America

2009-05-01T19:02:58+00:00

World Magazine

US Report on Religious Freedom: 'Watch' Cuba, Venezuela
Voice of America
By VOA News The US Commission on International Religious Freedom is recommending that the State Department closely "watch" Cuba and Venezuela for violations of religious freedoms.
Commission lists threats to religious freedom Deseret News
Religious freedom panel adds Nigeria to list of world's worst ... Associated Baptist Press
Washington Times - World Magazine - Journal of Turkish Weekly - Christian Broadcasting Network
all 132 news articles

100 Subpoenas Issued in Pension Case

2009-05-01T19:02:22+00:00

Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo said that as many as half of the intermediaries in pension transactions in New York State and New York City were not properly registered.

US dismisses Israel lobbyist case

2009-05-01T19:01:53+00:00

The US drops espionage-related charges against two pro-Israel lobbyists, saying it was unlikely to win.

Bears Declare Open Season on Bulls (Minyanville)

2009-05-01T19:00:00+00:00

Rain or shine, we review the day's biggest stock stories.

Biden kicked out of country after flu remarks? - Christian Science Monitor

2009-05-01T18:58:55+00:00

Voice of America

Biden kicked out of country after flu remarks?
Christian Science Monitor - Jimmy Orr
By Jimmy Orr | 05.01.09 Things have gotten so bad for the vice president following his disastrous Today Show appearance that he's been exiled?
Airlines upset with Biden's suggestion to avoid air travel because ... Bizjournals.com
Ruben Navarrette: Joe Biden's remarks stoked fears about flu pandemic CNN
Voice of America - Boston Globe - Wall Street Journal - CBS News
all 1,366 news articles

Palm Eos Coming To Sprint? - InformationWeek

2009-05-01T18:58:35+00:00

CNET News

Palm Eos Coming To Sprint?
InformationWeek - Marin Perez
Palm fans were in a tizzy yesterday, as news leaked out that the Eos would be the follow-up to the Pre. The device had a very slim design, nice specs, and would reportedly be available for AT&T.
Analysts Doubt Reports of Thin Palm Eos Phone NewsFactor Network
Palm Eos May Be Offered by Sprint Brighthand
NetworkWorld.com - Mobile Burn - San Francisco Chronicle - Mobile Magazine
all 85 news articles

Cameron's Avatar a 3D Drug Trip?

2009-05-01T18:57:00+00:00

bowman9991 writes "James Cameron's first movie since 'Titanic', his upcoming science fiction epic 'Avatar', has a budget pushing US$200 million and enough hype to power a mission to Mars. Now it appears the 3D technology he created to turn his vision into a reality, the key to Avatar's success or failure, may be habit forming. Dr. Mario Mendez, a behavioral neurologist at the University of California, said it is entirely possible Cameron's 3D technology could tap brain systems that are undisturbed by conventional 2D movies. Cameron himself believes 3D viewing 'is so close to a real experience that it actually triggers memory creation in a way that 2D viewing doesn't' and that stereoscopic (3D) viewing uses more neurons, which would further heighten its impact."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Summer resorts hiring heavily among US unemployed

2009-05-01T18:52:41+00:00

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) -- This summer, the guy running the Tilt-A-Whirl at the beach might be a laid-off, middle-aged accountant instead of the usual bored teenager. And the towel boy at the pool might be from East Providence instead of Eastern Europe....

Summer resorts hiring heavily among US unemployed (AP)

2009-05-01T18:52:31+00:00

Her Rival Now Her Boss, Clinton Settles Into New Role - New York Times

2009-05-01T18:50:57+00:00

Her Rival Now Her Boss, Clinton Settles Into New Role
New York Times - Brendan Smialowski
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday. By MARK LANDLER WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton insists her transition from presidential contender to secretary of state has been seamless, ...
Clinton says work just beginning as she completes 100 days AFP
Everyone feeling okay? Flu watch humor at the State presser Foreign Policy
The Associated Press - CBS News - MiamiHerald.com - Arkansas Times
all 99 news articles

Russian leaders in election dilemma

2009-05-01T18:50:11+00:00

Dmitry Medvedev's growing political stature is increasing the possibility that he will stand for re-election in 2012 despite assumptions that those polls would see Vladimir Putin's return, according to a top Kremlin adviser

TradingMarkets 7 Stocks You Need to Know for Monday (TradingMarkets.com)

2009-05-01T18:49:25+00:00

Despite a surprise boost in consumer confidence, buying was mild in the markets on Friday. Soaring higher in its very own dramatic "race to the 200-day" was Comcast, which added more than 5% on Friday.

Six men jailed for election fraud

2009-05-01T18:48:33+00:00

Six men are jailed for up to four-and-a-half years on charges relating to election fraud during a council vote in Slough in 2007.

Police find Ga. prof's Jeep; search nearby woods

2009-05-01T18:47:59+00:00

BOGART, Ga. (AP) -- Authorities on Friday swarmed a heavily wooded area in north Georgia where a wrecked red Jeep belonging to a former professor suspected of killing his wife and two others was discovered not far from his home....

Police find Ga. prof's Jeep; search nearby woods (AP)

2009-05-01T18:47:54+00:00

The Caucus: Liberal Groups Call for Pa. Primary

2009-05-01T18:47:53+00:00

Although Democratic heavyweights are lining up to support Senator Arlen Specter in his 2010 re-election bid, liberal activists have vowed to oppose any efforts to clear the Democratic field for him.

When the Engineer Gardens

2009-05-01T18:46:46+00:00

As with every spring, the rains fall, the sun shines, and I remain hopelessly inept as a gardener. Or, maybe, "inept" isn't quite the right word. "Lazy" and "impatient". There, that's the ticket. So, despite fantasizing repeatedly about the wonderful life we would lead if only we got around to putting in some vegetables this year, my husband and I have never gotten around to putting in some vegetables. At best, we keep the lawn mowed and free of vehicles on blocks.

But that may be changing because, last week, Baker brought home a copy of The All New Square Foot Gardening guide, a book written by a retired engineer, which manages to make home veggie patches appealing to both my laissez-faire approach to plant life, and Baker's (who is, himself, an engineer) tendencies towards efficiency-obsession and Maker glee. The book promises to help you grow more, in less space, with less work. OK, I'm game.

The basic idea is that most people try to garden like they're making a miniature farmstead---with wide rows, hills and furrows, plowed into the earth of your backyard. And, frankly, all that adds up to a pain in the ass. Tilling sucks. Your dirt probably isn't ideal for growing things. You get weeds that need to be dealt with every day. The watering process wastes water and usually ends up with some plants drowning and other plants parched. And all you want is a freakin' salad.

Square-foot gardening, on the other hand, is all about eliminating those problems. Instead of tilling the dirt and pumping in fertilizer, you build a big box, put a liner on the bottom, and fill it with a mixture of peat moss, vermiculite and compost. Great soil. And no weed seeds to sprout up.Because you make the box small enough to reach everything without stepping in the dirt, your soil stays aerated. Because you don't have to weed, you can grow plants from fewer seeds, closer together, with each box broken down into neat, anal-retentive grids. The idea of a garden that can be plotted out on graph paper is already making Baker salivate.

The watering solution is particularly slick. Instead of moving around a sprayer that never seems to successfully dampen the full area you've aimed it at (and chucks water onto places that don't need it), you hook up a pipe system to your box and screw in the hose. Plant stuff than needs lots of water closer to the pipe, and stuff that needs less further away. Then you can turn the water on (at a lower pressure than you'd use for spraying) and let it trickle down.

I'll be honest, as the wife of an engineer, I end up poking a lot of fun at the hyper-planning, "let us sit down and work out the numbers before we toast that bread" mindset. But it's all in fun. I promise. You engineers can be as detail-oriented as you want to be, as long as you keep offering up great solutions like this.

Image of a nicely gridded-up square foot garden courtesy shygantic, via a Creative Commons license.

Hood Canal bridge closes for 6 weeks

2009-05-01T18:45:44+00:00

PORT GAMBLE, Wash. (AP) -- The Hood Canal floating bridge, the major route between Washington's northern Olympic Peninsula and the rest of the state, closed early Friday for a six-week renovation....

Quicken Offers Free iPhone Apps - RedOrbit

2009-05-01T18:45:35+00:00

Quicken Offers Free iPhone Apps
RedOrbit
Intuit has designed a Quicken application for Apple Inc's iPhone to help users monitor their spending during this period of economic woes.
Manage your money with Quicken Online Mobile for iPhone CNET Crave Blog
Quicken Online strikes back at upstarts with iphone app VentureBeat
Los Angeles Times - iLounge - ITvoir
all 38 news articles

Stull, Stull & Brody Announces Securities Fraud Class Action Against Sequenom, Inc. and Its Senior Executive Officers (Marketwire)

2009-05-01T18:45:00+00:00

A class action lawsuit on behalf of all persons who purchased the common stock of Sequenom, Inc. between June 4, 2008 and April 29, 2009 has been filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California alleging violations of the Federal securities laws against Sequenom and its senior executive officers.

Research in Motion shares climb on UBS upgrade (AP)

2009-05-01T18:44:18+00:00

Research in Motion Ltd.'s stock got a nearly 4 percent boost Friday on an upgrade from UBS that predicted the weakened enterprise market is a "captive" audience for the BlackBerry smartphones that will soon need to alleviate its pent-up need for replacements.

NBC Universal programming exec Nora O'Brien dies (AP)

2009-05-01T18:39:57+00:00

NBC Universal says Nora O'Brien, its executive in charge of drama programming, has died. Spokesman Curt King says O'Brien died Wednesday after collapsing in Berkeley, Calif., on the set of a TV series in development for NBC.

Karsten Wade: Measuring community contributions at LF Collaboration Summit

2009-05-01T18:39:50+00:00

Folks at the Linux Foundation have just posted a bunch of video from the 2009 Collaboration Summit, including our panel on 8 April, Measuring Community Contribution (Flash video … but they do have a downloadable OGG!) Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier (OpenSUSE community manager) led the panel that included James Bottomly (Linux kernel SCSI maintainer etc.), Dan Frye (IBM’s VP of their open source dev group), Jono Bacon (Ubuntu community manager), and me. You can see lots of sympatico between everyone, good will, and all that. Call me a pushover, but I like these guys. :) You can also hear the nice discussion between Bottomly and Frye, where they are in violent agreement over past IBM mistakes, which The Reg tried to turn in to a controversy.

(Updated with correct date of Wednesday 8 April for the panel.)

Iraqi Shiites battered but not battling back

2009-05-01T18:38:57+00:00

BAGHDAD (AP) -- The anger in Baghdad's main Shiite district was raw and restless after twin car bombings took more than 50 lives earlier this week. But the true measure of the rage - in Iraqi terms - came the following morning: Morgues and streets were not full of Sunnis killed in payback violence....

QoTD: John Butler

2009-05-01T18:35:12+00:00

"Palatino holds the sad record for being the world's most heavily pirated typeface design, no thanks to Monotype's Book Antiqua, which has been given without royalty to every Microsoft Office user in the world." — John Butler

It's the first of May, the first of May...

2009-05-01T18:35:12+00:00

Yes, I'm listening to that Jonathan Coulton song. Time to close the browser tabs and go outside. (And the coffee place is out of scones today...coincidence?)

Bruce Perens: A Cyber-Attack on an American City. "I hope those responsible for emergency services, be they in business or government, are learning the lessons of Morgan Hill. The first lesson is what stayed up: stand-alone radio systems and not much else."

Are the spammers the good guys here? "Each week, Chinese Internet users receive 10 million e-mail messages and 70 million instant messages from the consortium."

moot wins, Time Inc. loses (the other loser: ReCAPTCHA.) Next time, write your own image labeling CAPTCHA—you could tag your whole archives with the griefer labor required to pwn one poll.

Al Giordano: How “The NAFTA Flu” Exploded "Smithfield Farms Fled US Environmental Laws to Open a Gigantic Pig Farm in Mexico, and All We Got Was this Lousy Swine Flu."

Red Hat getting the open source message out to the US federal government: Federal IT on a Budget Forum.

More hinky stuff to filter out of user-submitted data: JavaScript for hackers.

Yet another Git tutorial, this one from Charles Duan. Good explanation of rebasing.

IPC::ShareLite -- Perl module to do SysV IPC.

May Day protests intensify in Europe

2009-05-01T18:34:23+00:00

Protesters clashed with riot police in Germany, Turkey and Greece, while thousands angry at the government's responses to the global financial crisis took to the streets in France

NYC mayor lays off workers, won't tax rich

2009-05-01T18:34:22+00:00

NEW YORK (AP) -- Mayor Michael Bloomberg's election-year budget spares teachers, police officers and firefighters from his layoffs, but the billionaire former CEO refuses to consider proposals to raise taxes on the rich....

NYC mayor lays off workers, won't tax rich (AP)

2009-05-01T18:34:11+00:00

AP - Mayor Michael Bloomberg's election-year budget spares teachers, police officers and firefighters from his layoffs, but the billionaire former CEO refuses to consider proposals to raise taxes on the rich.

Las Vegas Sands Corp. to Announce First Quarter 2009 Financial Results (PR Newswire)

2009-05-01T18:33:00+00:00

Las Vegas Sands Corp. today announced that it will hold its quarterly conference call to discuss financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2009, on Tuesday, May 5, 2009.

Las Vegas entertainer Danny Gans dead at 52

2009-05-01T18:31:00+00:00

Possible H1N1 'Cluster' At Harvard Dental School

2009-05-01T18:30:50+00:00

The Harvard Dental Clinic will be closed through May 6 after Boston health officials learned a cluster of students are suffering from flu-like symptoms. Two students are now "probable" swine flu cases, and seven others have flu-like symptoms.

Rare gray whales win a round against the search for oil

2009-05-01T18:30:00+00:00

The critically endangered western gray whale (Esrichtiius robustus) has won a small victory in its fight for survival: some oil exploration companies have decided to delay seismic testing off the coasts of Russia. [More]

Oil settles above $53; manufacturing declines slow (AP)

2009-05-01T18:28:50+00:00

Oil prices finished the week with a late surge above $53 a barrel as traders looked past tepid economic reports and latched onto signs that U.S. manufacturing was on the mend.

Boston gripped by flu fever

2009-05-01T18:27:38+00:00

It's hard to ague when people are wearing masks, the T is cleaning trains in the middle of the day, Harvard Medical students are told to stay home and a plane is forced to land at Logan because a passenger felt achy.

Kohei Yoshida: Custom sort in DataPilot

2009-05-01T18:19:06+00:00

Just checked in this piece to the master branch of the Go-OO repository, to support sorting of DataPilot’s field members using custom sort lists. I’ve extended the popup window I wrote for the hide field members functionality to provide this additional sorting functionality. The result is the following popup window:

In the upper half of the window I’ve added a menu-like control, with the custom sort lists being provided in the submenu. The UI is fully functional, but still a bit rough around the edges. The custom sort list submenu, in particular, may need some additional work to handle a large set of custom sort lists, a sort list that is very long, or stuff like that. But as long as your sort list is in modest size, it should work just fine.

This feature didn’t make it in to 3.1 since we are in a stabilization phase for 3.1. But as soon as we branch master for the stable 3.1 branch, I will enable this feature in the default build in the master branch.

Mexicans turn to humor, creativity to endure flu

2009-05-01T18:18:59+00:00

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Televisa is cutting all "nonessential" kisses from its soap operas. A song called the "Influenza Cumbia" is climbing the charts. Cringe-worthy swine flu jokes are spreading faster than the illness ever could....

IE8 can't stop IE market share decline - TG Daily

2009-05-01T18:15:46+00:00

PhysOrg.com

IE8 can't stop IE market share decline
TG Daily - Wolfgang Gruener
By Wolfgang Gruener Chicago (IL) - Internet Explorer 8 may now be available through Windows Update, but the more aggressive rollout of the browser has yet to impact IE's continued loss of market share.
Microsoft To EU: Hear Us Out ChannelWeb
Microsoft meets EU's antitrust deadline over IE Computerworld
IT Business Net - Reuters - Register - NetworkWorld.com
all 290 news articles

Oppose voter ID legislation

2009-05-01T18:15:18+00:00

Oppose Voter ID

People, Pan Troglodytes (Chimps) and Pigs

2009-05-01T18:15:08+00:00

The text transcript is currently not available. Transcripts are posted about three weeks after the podcast airs.

Scientific American editor Christine Soares discusses the swine flu situation and Editor in Chief John Rennie talks about the May issue--topics include the specific genetic differences between humans and chimps, side-channel hacking, food shortages, and our leaky atmosphere. Plus, we'll test your knowledge of some recent science in the news.

[More]

Oppose Texas Senate Bill 298

2009-05-01T18:15:04+00:00

Oppose Texas Senate Bill 298 which for the first time in Texas would allow law enforcement to set up and operate DUI checkpoints.

CDC chief: No need to avoid public transportation

2009-05-01T18:12:48+00:00

The head of the federal agency that keeps track of new swine flu cases says there is "no increased risk" of infection for people using public transportation. Dr. Richard Besser was asked Friday about Vice President Joe Biden's statement that he wouldn't...

Microsoft Releases Super-Secure XP to US Air Force

2009-05-01T18:12:00+00:00

Wired is reporting that Microsoft is releasing the most secure version of Windows XP ever created, but only if you are the US Air Force. "The Air Force persuaded Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to provide it with a secure Windows configuration that saved the service about $100 million in contract costs and countless hours of maintenance. At a congressional hearing this week on cybersecurity, Alan Paller, research director of the Sans Institute, shared the story as an template for how the government could use its massive purchasing power to get companies to produce more secure products. And those could eventually be available to the rest of us. Security experts have been arguing for this "trickle-down" model for years. But rather than wield its buying power for the greater good, the government has long wimped out and taken whatever vendors served them. If the Air Force case is a good judge, however, things might be changing."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Remarks By The President After Meeting With His Cabinet

2009-05-01T18:12:00+00:00

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

___________________________________________________________________________

For Immediate Release May 1, 2009

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
AFTER MEETING WITH HIS CABINET

Cabinet Room

12:37 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you, everybody. It's been just over a week since we've learned about this novel strain of the flu virus that's now affected people in at least 11 countries -- or at least 11 of our states, as well as 11 other countries. And throughout this process, my top priority has been the health and the safety of the American people. And to that end, we've closely monitored the situation.

I am extraordinarily proud of the work that's been done by the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as the Department of Homeland Security and the CDC. We've got Dr. Richard Besser here, as well as Janet Napolitano -- they've been really leading the charge. We've now brought in the cavalry with Secretary Sebelius.

We're obviously focused on what needs to be done immediately, identifying and mitigating cases of H1N1 in the United States, pre-positioning antiviral treatments for those who are infected and making sure that they are distributed appropriately around the country, providing clear guidance as well as the best science for state and local officials as they move forward, and speak clearly to the American people as I did the evening of the news conference about the mitigation steps that they personally can take.

But we also need to prepare for the long term, since we know that these kinds of threats can emerge at any moment. Even if it turns out that the H1N1 is relatively mild on the front end, it could come back in a more virulent form during the actual flu season. And that's why we are investing in our public health infrastructure. We've had discussions about the production of vaccines for -- in anticipation of the flu season. And we've made sure that all our agencies here are coordinating, that they have appropriate action plans; that we, for example, are working with the Department of Education to provide clear guidelines for school closures; that we are working with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for example, to ensure that businesses are supportive of their hourly workers who need to stay home but may be worried about losing their jobs because they don't have sick leave, making sure that they are cooperating in what is going to be an overarching effort; discussions with our Secretary of State, as well as our Ambassador to the United Nations about how we're going to respond to potential requests from other countries for assistance in dealing with this issue.

Overall I'm very pleased with the progress that we've made. I think that those who have been on top of this have done an extraordinary job. I'm optimistic that we're going to be able to manage this effectively, but we still have more work to do, and I'm glad I've got such a great team doing it. And I want to make clear to everybody -- and the reason I brought this Cabinet meeting together is that we are taking this very seriously and we will take every single step that's necessary to make sure that the American people are safe.

One last point I want to make, because this was actually raised during this meeting -- somebody asked, why is this different from other flus? We don't know for certain that this will end up being more severe than other seasonal flus that we have had. It's been noted I think before that you have over 36,000 die on average every year from seasonal flus; you've have 200,000 hospitalizations.

It may turn out that H1N1 is -- runs its course like ordinary flus, in which case we will have prepared and we won't need all these preparations. The reason that people are concerned is -- the scientists are concerned -- is this is a new strain. So what happens is, is that Americans and people around the world have not built up immunity in the same way that they've built up immunity to the seasonal flus that we're accustomed to. Those seasonal flus may change, mutate slightly from year to year, but they're all roughly in the same band. When you have a new strain, then potentially our immune systems can't deal with it as effectively. And there are indications that in Mexico, at least, what you saw were relatively young, healthy people die from these -- from the H1N1, rather than people whose immune system is already compromised -- older individuals, very small infants, and so forth.

So that's why we're taking it seriously. We have not yet seen those same kinds of fatalities here in the United States among young, healthy people with non-compromising immune systems, but we want to make sure that we're preparing appropriately.

So I just want everybody to be clear that this is why this is a cause for concern, but not alarm. We are essentially ensuring that in the worst-case scenario we can manage this appropriately, government working with businesses, individuals, and the private sector, and are containing an outbreak and so we can ultimately get through this.

So thank you very much, everybody. Thank you, guys. Have a great weekend.

Q What are you looking for in a Supreme Court nominee?

Q Can you comment on the news about Justice Souter?

THE PRESIDENT: No Supreme Court questions.

Q No Supreme Court questions? What are you looking for in a nominee? (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: Have a great weekend, guys.

Q You, too, Mr. President.

END
12:44 P.M. EDT

UC president recommends Desmond-Hellmann for UCSF chancellor - Bizjournals.com

2009-05-01T18:11:13+00:00

UC president recommends Desmond-Hellmann for UCSF chancellor
Bizjournals.com - Ron Leuty
Outgoing Genentech executive Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann will be recommended to lead the University of California, San Francisco, as chancellor.
Bay Biz Buzz: Genentech exec eyes UCSF post Inside Bay Area
Genentech's Desmond-Hellmann May Take Helm At UCSF CNBC
Wall Street Journal Blogs - CNNMoney.com - MSN Money
all 8 news articles

Ten top Linux and open-source developer tools (ZDNet.uk)

2009-05-01T18:06:47+00:00

ZDNet.uk presents ten favorite development tools. "Without sound development tools, you will not be able to capitalise on the best qualities of Linux. Fortunately, there is no shortage of Linux and open-source development tools. But if you are a new user, you might not know which utilities to choose, so here are 10 outstanding tools that will help take your development to another level."

Cancer dispute in Tri-Cities

2009-05-01T18:06:11+00:00

RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) -- Some cancer patients in south-central Washington's Tri-Cities are wondering who will be their doctor amid a management dispute at a clinic there....

Preserve Texas Law Enforcement Resources

2009-05-01T18:04:45+00:00

SB 358 would take away state grant funding from any local entity found to have a policy of not fully enforcing all federal immigration laws.

US court clears way for Demjanjuk removal - Reuters

2009-05-01T18:01:46+00:00

Make: Talk on BlogTalkRadio

US court clears way for Demjanjuk removal
Reuters - Andrew Stern
By Andrew Stern CHICAGO, May 1 (Reuters) - A federal appeals court cleared the way on Friday for US authorities to deport accused Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk to Germany, dropping a stay that halted his removal at the last minute two weeks ago.
Nazi suspect a step closer to deportation CNN
Demjanjuk loses deportation case BBC News
Brisbane Times - The Associated Press - RTT News - United Press International
all 503 news articles

My developerWorks: 6 ways to build your technical skills and your professional network (developerWorks)

2009-05-01T18:00:50+00:00

IBM has launched My developerWorks, a social networking site. "It may look small at first: just sticking "My" in front of developerWorks. But what those characters represent is huge: You can now interact with developerWorks' how-to content and with your peers on a personal level—by personalizing and customizing your view of developerWorks content so you see just the information that's pertinent to you. My developerWorks makes it easy. It also gives you a window into the ways your peers are using, tagging, and contributing to the knowledge base, so you can learn from each other while building your skills and your professional network at the same time."

Search From Your Twitter Page. So What?

2009-05-01T18:00:00+00:00

Twitter finally adds search to user homepages, but so what? Twitter is about the message, not the medium, so attempts to gin up interest in the site — and measure by numbers of users and page views — completely misses the point.

Electric Car Makes Le Mans Racing Greener

2009-05-01T18:00:00+00:00

A Swiss outfit hopes to shake up endurance racing with a 296-horsepower EV with stump-pulling torque.

Record numbers declared insolvent

2009-05-01T17:58:46+00:00

Figures from the Insolvency Service show that 4,941 companies went into compulsory liquidation or creditors' voluntary liquidations in the first quarter as the recession continues to bite

Joe Brockmeier: Test driving KDE 4.2.2 packages

2009-05-01T17:58:34+00:00

Just whipped the KDE 4.2.2 packages onto my system and running that as my main desktop for the next few days. (Longer if I like it…) Any recommendations as to the best KDE Twitter type application? I’ve been using Gwibber, but want to take a look at Qt microblogging apps. Suggestions welcome.

Woman's 'flu-like symptoms' diverts plane to Mass.

2009-05-01T17:58:26+00:00

A flight from Munich, Germany to Washington has been diverted to Boston because a passenger complained of "flu-like symptoms."

Mass. Mid-Day Numbers

2009-05-01T17:58:26+00:00

The winning numbers drawn Friday in "The Numbers Game" mid-day draw were: 0-9-4-3

On London: Banks' rehabilitation could take time

2009-05-01T17:58:16+00:00

There is no doubt the sector's outlook has improved, but it still needs to de-leverage and it remains dependent on state support, writes Neil Hume

Free Comic Book Day Recruits Wolverine, Green Lantern

2009-05-01T17:58:00+00:00

Indie comic shops across America will hand out freebies Saturday, and Hugh Jackman gets behind the annual event.

Barton likens BCS to 'communism'

2009-05-01T17:56:52+00:00

Texas Rep. Joe Barton makes the case that the college football system is what it is because of money.

Parking fine dismay as tractor mistaken for silver Belgian car

2009-05-01T17:56:33+00:00

A Northumberland man is issued with parking fines of £1,000 by Leeds City Council for a tractor which had never been near the city.

Chrysler urges court to approve its plan (Reuters)

2009-05-01T17:55:08+00:00

How-to: using the new Facebook stream API in a desktop app (ars technica)

2009-05-01T17:50:49+00:00

Ryan Paul takes a look at a new set of APIs that allow third-party software to interact with the Facebook activity stream. "Courtesy of these APIs, rich support for Facebook could soon arrive in your favorite Twitter client and other social networking programs. In this article, I'll give you an inside look at how I used the new APIs to add full support for the Facebook stream in Gwibber, my own open source microblogging client for Linux."

TradingMarkets 7 ETFs You Need to Know for Monday (TradingMarkets.com)

2009-05-01T17:50:46+00:00

Energy ETFs rebounded on the final trading day of the week. As such the Vanguard Energy ETF was up more than 2% intraday on Friday.

Security advisories for Friday

2009-05-01T17:50:16+00:00

Slackware has updated ruby (denial of service).

Red Hat has updated libwmf (pointer use-after-free flaw), gpdf (multiple vulnerabilities), kernel (multiple vulnerabilities).

Mandriva has updated udev (2008.1, 2009.0: multiple vulnerabilities), udev (Corporate 4.0: multiple vulnerabilities), apache (information leak).

Debian has updated freetype (integer overflows).

CentOS has updated kernel (multiple vulnerabilities).

Daily Boston-to-AC plane service starts

2009-05-01T17:50:05+00:00

Sprint Airlines has launched daily service between Boston and Atlantic City as part of an effort to make the gambling resort more accessible to a wider market.

Daily Boston-to-AC plane service starts

2009-05-01T17:48:23+00:00

Sprint Airlines has launched daily service between Boston and Atlantic City as part of an effort to make the gambling resort more accessible to a wider market.

Extreme Ultraviolet Laser Challenges Einstein

2009-05-01T17:48:00+00:00

A new super intense laser can knock multiple, tightly held electrons off of an atom at once, challenging Einstein's ideas about when light is a wave or a particle.

Visteon dispute nears resolution

2009-05-01T17:47:48+00:00

The dispute over the collapse of Visteon could be nearing the end, as a union recommends members accept an improved deal.

Hobby robot actuator can destroy your finger in an instant

2009-05-01T17:47:13+00:00

Andrew Alter of Trossen Robotics says:

I was working on my mech Hagetaka [a bipedal combat robot] the other night and made the mistake of grabbing at the robot to stabilize it while it was moving, and managed to graze my finger in one of the joints. It drew blood and immediately reminded me that working with these types of servos was an entirely different ballgame than your standard hobby servo. With that in mind, we put together a little demonstration video of just how powerful these servos can be! Enjoy!

RX-64: Just one more weapon in Skynet’s arsenal

Can't see the video? Click here

Now more than 140 swine flu cases in US

2009-05-01T17:45:38+00:00

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama voiced hope Friday that the swine flu virus will run its course "like ordinary flus" as the government reported more than two dozen new cases and Continental Airlines curtailed flights into more heavily ravaged Mexico....

Warren Buffett's biggest question

2009-05-01T17:45:30+00:00

Even the 20th century's greatest investor is not immortal and Berkshire Hathaway's shareholders have a right to be told who will succeed the 78-year-old and lead the company

Ford April sales off 32 pct, gains market share

2009-05-01T17:42:19+00:00

DETROIT (AP) -- Record sales of its fuel-efficient Fusion helped Ford grab a bigger slice of the U.S. car market in April, even as its overall sales dropped 32 percent....

Woman mugged at gunpoint on her front steps in Charlestown

2009-05-01T17:42:09+00:00

A correspondent passes along this report from a friend of his who lives near the Monument in Charlestown:

Yesterday I was robbed at gunpoint at 10:20 am on my front steps in Charlestown. I am okay (just badly shaken up) and fortunate that the predator did not force his way into my home since I had my keys in my door lock.

Please keep your guard up at all times of the day and in all neighborhoods. No neighborhood or time of day is immune from increased crime. One of my neighbors informed me that she was pick-pocketed by a pro a few days ago on Federal Street. She lost her wallet and blackberry. Within 20 minutes, there were significant charges on her credit cards.

Son jailed for heating murder bid

2009-05-01T17:41:59+00:00

A Tyneside man who tried to kill his mother by turning off the central heating is jailed for 10-and-a-half years.

Citi to sell Nikko to SMFG for $7.8bn

2009-05-01T17:41:58+00:00

Citigroup is selling its Japanese domestic securities business to Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group in a $7.8bn deal that gives the US bank a vital capital boost and alters Japan's financial sector significantly

GE appoints 2 new company officers (AP)

2009-05-01T17:41:25+00:00

General Electric Co. on Friday appointed Samuel Aquillano and Eric Ducharme as company officers, effective immediately. Company officers -- which number 187 -- lead large revenue generating businesses or are in critical roles that help drive growth, according to GE.

Make: Talk 008 -- Kelly and Erik of The Urban Homestead, Friday, May1 , 2009 at noon PDT

2009-05-01T17:40:56+00:00

In this episode of Make: Talk, we'll be joined by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen, authors of The Urban Homestead. Kelly and Erik grow food, keep chickens, brew, bike, bake and plot revolution from their 1/12th acre farm in the heart of Los Angeles. They are keepers of the popular DIY blog, Homegrown Evolution. Their first book, The Urban Homestead, a primer on urban self-reliance, was released by Process Media in May of 2008. The New York Times magazine called it "Home Economics as our great-grandparents knew it."

We'll also present some news from the world of making, and our favorite tricks, tips, and tools of the week. Be sure to call in for prizes that we'll award during the program! The number is (646) 915-8698.

Below is the show player, where you can listen to the live program on Friday, and to past episodes.

Professor's Holocaust-Gaza comparison stirs debate (AP)

2009-05-01T17:39:47+00:00

AP - A Jewish university professor accused of anti-Semitism for comparing Israel's treatment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to the Holocaust says he's received hundreds of messages of support and a bombardment of hate mail.

Professor's Holocaust-Gaza comparison stirs debate

2009-05-01T17:39:47+00:00

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A Jewish university professor accused of anti-Semitism for comparing Israel's treatment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to the Holocaust says he's received hundreds of messages of support and a bombardment of hate mail....

Gov. Schwarzenegger Announces $10 Million Recovery Act Funding Now Available Through Green Jobs Corps Grant Competition

2009-05-01T17:37:10+00:00

Governor's Green Jobs Corps to Help State Economy, At-Risk Youth and Green Industries Pushing American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act) funding into the California economy quickly and with accountability and transparency, the California Recovery …

BASF 4th Annual Law and Disorder Night at AT&T Park

2009-05-01T17:37:03+00:00

Presented By:
Date: July 7, 2009
Time: 5:15 pm - 7:15 pm

4th Annual Law & Disorder Night @ AT&T Park
Tuesday, July 7, 2009 at 7:15 p.m. The San Francisco Giants will host their 4th Annual "Law & Disorder" Legal Professionals Night at AT&T Park.

Pre-game reception starts at 5:15 p.m. and runs until the start of game.

Judges, lawyers, law students, Summer interns, friends and family are invited to celebrate their contribution to the community during an evening of drinks, music and the chance to rub elbows with the Giants Legal Team!

Giants vs Florida Marlins

Bleacher tickets may be purchased here for $20. For information on Luxury Suites and Premium Seating or for group orders of 25 or more call Matt Peterson at (415) 972-2247 or email mpeterson@sfgiants.com

Man shot dead outside Wandsworth prison

2009-05-01T17:35:17+00:00

A man was shot dead today outside a prison in southwest London after visiting an inmate, police said.

Olympic design chief warns of 'wasteland' legacy

2009-05-01T17:31:22+00:00

London's Olympic Park could become a "wasteland" after the 2012 Games unless better legacy plans are put in place to counter the removal of temporary stadiums, one of the Government's chief design advisers was reported as saying today.

SUSE Linux Enterprise in the Americas: PlateSpin Recon 3.6 Released!

2009-05-01T17:30:10+00:00

Novell Releases PlateSpin Recon 3.6

WALTHAM, Mass.
29 Apr 2009

First server workload profiling, analysis and planning solution to give customers ongoing visibility into their virtual infrastructure

Novell today announced the availability of PlateSpin® Recon 3.6 , the first data center workload profiling, analysis and planning tool to combine consolidation planning with virtual capacity management to give customers an ongoing view of their physical and virtual infrastructure.

As customers embrace virtualization in the data center, they need comprehensive information about their physical and virtual server workloads, collected over time, to give a true picture of how resources are being used. PlateSpin Recon 3.6 allows data center managers to gain new insight into their virtual infrastructure, not only to better plan the initial virtualization initiative, but also to maximize the return on their virtualization investment and avoid or postpone costly hardware purchases over time.

Designed to take the guesswork out of complex server consolidation and capacity planning initiatives, PlateSpin Recon 3.6 offers best-fit scenario modeling that increases server consolidation ratios while simultaneously minimizing resource contention. Post-consolidation, PlateSpin Recon continues to track and analyze key resource utilization metrics as workloads change over time, so customers can re-assess and re-optimize their virtual infrastructures, increase workload performance, and reclaim and redeploy underutilized resources.

“Virtualization initiatives cannot be successful without a thorough understanding of the server workloads running in the data center,” said Richard Whitehead, director of product marketing for data center solutions at Novell. “To ensure a maximum return on investment, successful data center initiatives require upfront planning and analysis. PlateSpin Recon 3.6 not only helps with the upfront planning, but is versatile enough to continue to track important utilization metrics over time, ensuring ongoing efficiency, productivity and return on investment.”

PlateSpin Recon remotely discovers hardware and software inventory across the data center, on the industry’s broadest range of operating systems, virtualization platforms and hardware. By examining resource utilization – CPU, disk, memory and network – for each workload over time, it ensures the optimal fit between real workload requirements and available or planned resources. PlateSpin Recon matches utilization peaks and valleys across workloads to fit more workloads onto each virtual host, optimizing resource utilization. It also identifies gaps between virtual resource allocation and actual usage: minimizing these gaps maximizes the virtual resource capacity of existing IT infrastructure, extending useful service life and postponing new hardware purchases.

PlateSpin Recon provides powerful virtual infrastructure management features to help organizations monitor and manage the growth of virtual machines, avoid virtual infrastructure sprawl and automate IT chargeback for physical and virtual resources. New features in Version 3.6 include:

Resource reclamation reports that offer customers graphical proof points to show resource consumption and reclaimable resources;
The ability to include virtual clusters in virtual infrastructure reports;
Support for SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server 11;
Solaris Containers support, allowing customers to plan migrations of Solaris workloads to Solaris Containers;
A new licensing model offering less expensive ongoing analysis of both physical and virtual data center infrastructures.

“We have always recommended PlateSpin Recon to our customers as the best solution for consolidation planning. Its intelligent algorithms consistently give higher consolidation ratios than other products, putting more VMs on each virtual host, meaning less hardware and licenses to buy and lowering the initial capital expense.” said Damon Brown, CTO, Govplace.“The new virtual capacity management features make it a simple decision to keep using PlateSpin Recon after the initial consolidation exercise. As workloads in the data center evolve over time, increasing or decreasing resource utilization, PlateSpin Recon helps manage and balance these changing needs with the available resources. Even when the virtualization platform shows maximum resource allocation, PlateSpin Recon identifies underutilized resources to be reclaimed and reassigned.”

PlateSpin Recon, along with the other products in the PlateSpin workload management family – PlateSpin Migrate, PlateSpin Orchestrate, PlateSpin Protect and PlateSpin Forge – enables customers to profile, migrate, protect and manage server workloads between physical and virtual infrastructures in heterogeneous IT environments. PlateSpin Workload Management from Novell is the only solution on the market today to support 32-and 64-bit Windows and Linux servers, as well as all leading hypervisors including VMware ESX and ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, Virtual Iron, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with integrated Xen.

Availability
PlateSpin Recon 3.6 is available immediately. For more information about this announcement, see http://www.platespin.com/products/recon.

About Novell
Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) delivers the best engineered, most interoperable Linux platform and a portfolio of integrated IT management software that helps customers around the world reduce cost, complexity and risk. With our infrastructure software and ecosystem of partnerships, Novell harmoniously integrates mixed IT environments, allowing people and technology to work as one. For more information, visit www.novell.com.

Novell and PlateSpin are registered trademarks and Workload Portability is a trademark of Novell, Inc. in the United States and other countries. *All third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Press Contact

Ian Bruce
Novell, Inc.
Telephone: +1 781 464-8034
Email: ibruce@novell.com

Snoozing juror means nightmare for Mass. man

2009-05-01T17:28:29+00:00

A juror who appeared to snooze through part of a man's trial on cocaine distribution charges led to a nightmare for the defendant.

Chrysler court rescue bid begins

2009-05-01T17:28:14+00:00

Chrysler closed its US factories on Friday - as bankruptcy proceedings to start its restructuring plans began.

Chrysler court rescue bid begins

2009-05-01T17:28:14+00:00

Chrysler closed its US factories on Friday - as bankruptcy proceedings to start its restructuring plans began.

Employee (Almost) Chronicles Sun's Top Ten Failures

2009-05-01T17:28:00+00:00

Business and Open Source pundit Matt Asay picked up on a recent attempt by Sun's Dan Baigent to chronicle the ten largest failures that took the tech giant from a $200 billion peak valuation to the recent buyout by Oracle for a mere $7.4 billion. Unfortunately, Dan only made it to number three on his list before Sun pulled the plug. How long will it take corporate overlords until they finally realize that broad level censorship and trying to control the message are far more harmful than just becoming part of the discourse? "I find that I tend to learn much more from my failures than from my successes. I'd be grateful for the chance to learn from Sun's, too. Sun, please let Baigent continue his countdown. It allows Sun to constructively chronicle its own failings, rather than allowing others to do so in less generous terms."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Flu cases reach 151 in U.S.

2009-05-01T17:24:00+00:00

New cases of H1N1, also known as swine flu, are reported in Delaware, Illinois, Kentucky, South Carolina and Tennessee. Mexico reports 15 confirmed deaths from the virus and a total of 358 cases.

The new H1N1 influenza outbreak crossed the 150 mark in the U.S. this morning, as new cases were reported in Delaware, Illinois, Kentucky, South Carolina and Tennessee, bringing the total to 151.

Pregnant Briton 'faces execution'

2009-05-01T17:22:57+00:00

A pregnant British woman faces death by firing squad if she is convicted of smuggling drugs at a trial in Laos, campaigners say.

Helicopter thriller is match for Bollywood

2009-05-01T17:21:31+00:00

Dramatic events in Mumbai could rival the plot of the Booker Prize-winning The White Tiger or Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire. But the real-life thriller out of India's financial capital this week will prickle the neck hair of many a corporate leader around the world

Macquarie chief's performance-related pay slashed

2009-05-01T17:21:15+00:00

Macquarie Group's reputation as Australia's "millionaires factory" has been shattered by the global downturn after the investment bank's chief executive saw his remuneration plunge

House climate bill markup plans uncertain as Dems lack votes - New York Times

2009-05-01T17:19:36+00:00

Environment News Service

House climate bill markup plans uncertain as Dems lack votes
New York Times - Darren Samuelsohn
By DARREN SAMUELSOHN, Greenwire Prospects of a House subcommittee markup next week on a major energy and global warming bill appear dim as the panel's Democratic leaders head into the weekend without a clear signal that they have enough votes to move ...
Obama, House Energy and Commerce to meet Politico
Cap and Trade Update Helicopter Association International
SmartBrief - Wall Street Journal Blogs - Heritage.org - Oil & Gas Journal
all 60 news articles

Celgene shares fall on Revlimid sales concerns (AP)

2009-05-01T17:17:39+00:00

Celgene Corp. shares fell Friday as analysts voiced concern over the sales performance its key drug and its high research spending, even after the company reported first-quarter profit and revenue that narrowly beat expectations.

Stress-test results may be pivotal for BofA chief after ouster as ... - Bizjournals.com

2009-05-01T17:17:21+00:00

guardian.co.uk

Stress-test results may be pivotal for BofA chief after ouster as ...
Bizjournals.com - Adam O'Daniel
Protesters gathered outside Bank of America's annual meeting this week. Holding the megaphone is Anastasia Christman of the Service Employees International Union, one of several groups that have been highly critical of BofA Chief Executive Kenneth ...
Video: BofA's Lewis Loses Chairman's Job - Bloomberg Bloomberg
BofA's Lewis: We 'welcome' Massey's leadership The Associated Press
Houston Chronicle - Wall Street Journal - Reuters - MarketWatch
all 1,649 news articles

Chrysler's `speedy' bankruptcy case gets started (AP)

2009-05-01T17:17:04+00:00

Attorneys for Chrysler LLC will ask a federal bankruptcy judge Monday to let the ailing automaker start using a new infusion of $4.5 billion in loans from the Treasury Department to keep operating under bankruptcy protection.

Dutch parade attacker and policeman die

2009-05-01T17:16:17+00:00

A Dutchman who tried to drive his car into a bus carrying Queen Beatrix at a royal parade died from his injuries today.

Why Did the White House Delete Bush's Tweets?

2009-05-01T17:15:57+00:00

Barack Obama's Webheads are getting ready to launch a new Twitter feed for President Change. But the White House already had a Twitter account. It has disappeared down the memory hole.

Given the widespread belief that Obama invented the Internet, many will scoff at the idea that the Bush White House had a Twitter account. But it did — and the administration handed over twitter.com/thewhitehouse at noon on Inauguration Day, just like it did with the whitehouse.gov website. Google still has the old account, with Obama's tweets, in its cache.

Valleywag alum Paul Boutin suggests on Gadgetwise that this is a simple rationalization of accounts, matching the definite-article-free "whitehouse" username the Obama team uses on Flickr and YouTube. But Obama's Twitterers didn't just change the username on the account; they started fresh, wiping out all of the White House's existing Twitter followers, and the entire archive of messages.

Perhaps it's safe to assume that the dwindling fans of the Bush White House wouldn't want to transfer their allegiances. And many of the Bush tweets were just broken pointers to pages on 43's now-archived website. But there ought to be something about the White House that transcends its occupant. A new president doesn't move his residence from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. There's something about this move that smacks of change for change's sake.

Update: It's alive! The White House Twitter account, previously protected, is now tweeting. Nothing personally typed by Obama yet.

Gov. Schwarzenegger Delivers Keynote at AltaMed’s National Public Policy Forum

2009-05-01T17:14:13+00:00

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today delivered the keynote address at AltaMed's National Healthcare Reform Policy Forum. The Governor used the forum to highlight the important role of the health care industry - community clinics in particular - to our …

Will Egypt's plans to kill pigs protect it from swine flu -- sorry, H1N1 flu?

2009-05-01T17:14:00+00:00

As swine flu fears sweep the world, governments everywhere are taking steps to prepare for a global pandemic, such as ramping up disease surveillance, reinforcing medicine stockpiles, and distributing infection control information to citizens. Egypt, however, with no confirmed cases of swine flu within its borders, added another step: Killing all 300,000 of its pigs. [More]

Hartford Loss Worse than Expected (Zacks.com)

2009-05-01T17:12:56+00:00

Excluding investment results, operating loss was $3.66 per share, far worse than the consensus estimate of a loss of $3.05 per share.

The Fight Over the Google of All Libraries: a Wired.com FAQ

2009-05-01T17:11:00+00:00

Google is nearing a settlement with U.S. authors that will let it build the world's biggest library, but the deal is being haunted by antitrust concerns, objections from archivists and complaints about Google becoming the master of all the orphan books. Wired.com's Google Book Settlement FAQ helps you figure it out, without reading the 334-page court settlement.

Statement by the President in honor of World Press Freedom Day

2009-05-01T17:10:00+00:00

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

_____________________________________________________________

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 1, 2009

Statement by the President in honor of World Press Freedom Day

World Press Freedom Day is annually observed on May 3 to remind us all of the vital importance of this core freedom. It is a day in which we celebrate the indispensable role played by journalists in exposing abuses of power, while we sound the alarm about the growing number of journalists silenced by death or jail as they attempt to bring daily news to the public.

Although World Press Freedom Day has only been celebrated since 1993, its roots run deep in the international community. In 1948, as people across the globe emerged from the horrors of the Second World War, nations saw fit to enshrine in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights the fundamental principle that everyone "has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

Even as the world recognizes the central and indisputable importance of press freedom, journalists find themselves in frequent peril. Since this day was first celebrated some sixteen years ago, 692 journalists have been killed. Only a third of those deaths were linked to the dangers of covering war; the majority of victims were local reporters covering topics such as crime, corruption, and national security in their home countries. Adding to this tragic figure are the hundreds more each year who face intimidation, censorship, and arbitrary arrest – guilty of nothing more than a passion for truth and a tenacious belief that a free society depends on an informed citizenry. In every corner of the globe, there are journalists in jail or being actively harassed: from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe, Burma to Uzbekistan, Cuba to Eritrea. Emblematic examples of this distressing reality are figures like J.S. Tissainayagam in Sri Lanka, or Shi Tao and Hu Jia in China. We are also especially concerned about the citizens from our own country currently under detention abroad: individuals such as Roxana Saberi in Iran, and Euna Lee and Laura Ling in North Korea.

Today, I lend my voice of support and admiration to all those brave men and women of the press who labor to expose truth and enhance accountability around the world. In so doing, I recall the words of Thomas Jefferson: "The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."

Mass. launches new lobbyist public search site

2009-05-01T17:08:16+00:00

Massachusetts has launched a new public Web site to make it easier for citizens to keep track of lobbyists.

H.R.1388 The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act

2009-05-01T17:06:55+00:00

A bill entitled "The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, an Act to reauthorize and reform the national service laws."

H.R.627 Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act of 2009

2009-05-01T17:06:55+00:00

To amend the Truth in Lending Act to establish fair and transparent practices relating to the extension of credit under an open end consumer credit plan, and for other purposes.

S.Con.Res.13 An original concurrent resolution setting forth the congressional budget for the United States Government for fiscal year 2010, revising the appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal year 2009, and setting forth the appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2011 through 2014.

2009-05-01T17:06:55+00:00

An original concurrent resolution setting forth the congressional budget for the United States Government for fiscal year 2010, revising the appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal year 2009, and setting forth the appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2011 through 2014.

S.386 Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009

2009-05-01T17:06:55+00:00

A bill to improve enforcement of mortgage fraud, securities fraud, financial institution fraud, and other frauds related to federal assistance and relief programs, for the recovery of funds lost to these frauds, and for other purposes.

H.R.20 Melanie Blocker Stokes MOTHERS Act

2009-05-01T17:06:55+00:00

To provide for research on, and services for individuals with, postpartum depression and psychosis.

H.R.1913 Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009

2009-05-01T17:06:55+00:00

To provide Federal assistance to States, local jurisdictions, and Indian tribes to prosecute hate crimes, and for other purposes.

H.R.669 Nonnative Wildlife Invasion Prevention Act

2009-05-01T17:06:55+00:00

To prevent the introduction and establishment of nonnative wildlife species that negatively impact the economy, environment, or other animal species' or human health, and for other purposes.

S.773 Cybersecurity Act of 2009

2009-05-01T17:06:55+00:00

A bill to ensure the continued free flow of commerce within the United States and with its global trading partners through secure cyber communications, to provide for the continued development and exploitation of the Internet and intranet communications for such purposes, to provide for the development of a cadre of information technology specialists to improve and maintain effective cybersecurity defenses against disruption, and for other purposes.

S.729 DREAM Act of 2009

2009-05-01T17:06:55+00:00

A bill to amend the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 to permit States to determine State residency for higher education purposes and to authorize the cancellation of removal and adjustment of status of certain alien students who are long-term United States residents and who entered the United States as children, and for other purposes.

H.J.Res.5 Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President.

2009-05-01T17:06:55+00:00

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President.

H.R.1409 Employee Free Choice Act of 2009

2009-05-01T17:06:55+00:00

To amend the National Labor Relations Act to establish an efficient system to enable employees to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to provide for mandatory injunctions for unfair labor practices during organizing efforts, and for other purposes.

H.R.25 Fair Tax Act of 2009

2009-05-01T17:06:55+00:00

To promote freedom, fairness, and economic opportunity by repealing the income tax and other taxes, abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, and enacting a national sales tax to be administered primarily by the States.

H.R.1 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

2009-05-01T17:06:55+00:00

Making supplemental appropriations for job preservation and creation, infrastructure investment, energy efficiency and science, assistance to the unemployed, and State and local fiscal stabilization, for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2009, and for other purposes.

H.R.45 Blair Holt's Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2009

2009-05-01T17:06:55+00:00

To provide for the implementation of a system of licensing for purchasers of certain firearms and for a record of sale system for those firearms, and for other purposes.

Earnings Preview: Kraft Foods Inc. (AP)

2009-05-01T17:04:53+00:00

Kraft Foods Inc., the nation's largest food and beverage maker, reports its first-quarter earnings on Tuesday before the market opens. The following is a summary of key developments and analyst opinion related to the period.

Background On Naturalization Ceremony For Active Duty Service Members

2009-05-01T17:04:00+00:00

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary
____________________________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 1, 2009

BACKGROUND ON NATURALIZATION CEREMONY FOR ACTIVE DUTY SERVICE MEMBERS:

Today, President Obama will deliver remarks at a naturalization ceremony for active duty service members. This ceremony recognizes the contributions made by immigrant members of the U.S. armed forces who choose to join the American family as citizens.

Mike Aytes, Acting Deputy Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) within the Department of Homeland Security, will present the home countries of the candidates for citizenship, and Secretary Janet Napolitano will administer the oath of citizenship.

President Obama will then present Peter Lemon with the Outstanding American by Choice award, which recognizes the outstanding achievements of naturalized U.S. citizens.

The audience will be composed of the service members and their families. Department of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and General James Cartwright, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are also expected to attend.

Service members becoming American citizens:
Anthony Barber Agraviador, U.S. Army, SPC, E-4, Phillipines
Born in the Phillipines, Agraviador joined the U.S. Army in 2008. He is currently assigned to 335th Trans. Det. 24 BN in Fort Eustis.

Alex Almendras Burton, U.S. Army National Guard Reserve, Bolivia
Almendras entered the U.S. at the age of 11 in 1998. He is a member of the U.S. Army National Guard Reserve.

Priscella Decoda Beacher, U.S. Army, PFC, E-3, Jamaica
Born in Jamaica in 1987, Beacher immigrated as a child of a U.S. citizen in 2006. She is currently enlisted with the U.S. Army and is stationed at Fort Lee.

Carlyle Christophe Campbell, U.S. Navy, E-1, Jamaica
Born in Jamaica in 1977, Campbell immigrated as a spouse of a U.S. citizen in 2007. Mr. Campbell is currently serving in the U.S. Navy and is stationed in Norfolk.

Jeanne Ginette Ebongue Tapo, U.S. Navy, E-2, Personnel Specialist Seaman, Gabon
Born in Gabon, Africa, Ebongue joined the U.S. Navy in 2007. Her present command is the USS Enterprise (CVN-65).

Ricardo Kelene Fender, U.S. Army, E-2, Jamaica
Fender entered the U.S. at the age of 18 in 2005 and was accepted into the U.S. Army Reserves in 2008.

Christian Karl Glenn, U.S. Coast Guard, E-5, Germany
Glenn entered the U.S. at the age of 3 in 1986 and serves in the U.S. Coast Guard.

Xaverie Caroline Hildebrandt, U.S. Army, E-4, Cameroon
Born in Cameroon, Hildebrandt entered the U.S. at the age of 17 in 1991. She joined ROTC in high school and then the U.S. Army.

Donaven Jack, U.S. Marine Corps, Sgt E-5, Micronesia
Born in Micronesia, Jack now serves in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Przemyslaw Lesniewica, U.S. Navy, E-3, Poland
Born in Poland, Lesniewica came to the U.S. to be part of a youth ministry in Wisconsin. He now serves in the U.S. Navy.

Juan Miguel Leyva Marrero, U.S. Marine Corps, L Corporal E-3, Cuba
Born in Cuba, Leyva entered the U.S. at the age of 15 in 2000 and later joined the U.S. Marine Corps.

Anthony Marcus McKoy, U.S. Marine Corps, E-3, Guyana
Born in Guyana, McKoy entered the U.S. at the age of 10 in 1995 and later joined the U.S. Marine Corps.

Nijinsky Orlando Mendez Belmonte, U.S. Navy, Airman Recruit, E-2, Bolivia
Mendez entered the U.S. at the age of 18 in 2007 and later joined the U.S. Navy.

Abdul Goffur Guillermo Mondol Romero, U.S. Marine Corps, Sergeant, Nicaragua
Mondol entered the U.S. at the age of 5 in 1985 and joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 2001.

Alejandro Nunez, U.S. Navy, E-5, Mexico
Nunez is the son of migrant field workers in Mexico. He joined the U.S. Navy after a recruiter came to his high school.

Chryshann Pierre, U.S. Army, Specialist, Bahamas
Pierre entered the U.S. at the age 9 in 1990. She serves in the U.S. Army and will apply for a warrant officer position once she becomes a citizen.

Leonardo Porras, U.S. Navy, Colombia
Porras was born in Colombia in 1973. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 2003 and is currently stationed at Little Creek Amphibious Base.

Jose Miguel Quijano, U.S. Marine Corps, PFC, Peru
Born in Peru, Quijano entered the U.S. at the age of 11 in 2000. He later joined the U.S. Marine Corps.

Hazzell Abigail Ramos, U.S. Marine Corps, Corporal, Nicaragua
Ramos came to the U.S. at the age of six and later joined the U.S. Marine Corps.

Jorge Fancisco Sifuentos Velasco, U.S. Army, PFC, E-3, El Salvador
Born in El Salvador, Sifuentos moved to Louisiana at a young age. He later joined the U.S. Army.

Eder Asael Valle Hernandez, U.S. Navy, NE-3, Mexico
Valle entered the U.S. at the age of 2 in 1990. He later joined the U.S. Navy.

Armel Possi Yepmo, U.S. Air Force, Cameroon
Born in Cameroon, Yepmo entered the U.S. at the age of 26 in 2008. He serves in the U.S. Air Force.

Can Yurdagul, U.S. Army National Guard, Turkey
Born in Turkey, Yurdagul entered the U.S. at the age of 11 in 2000. He joined ROTC and now serves in the U.S. Army National Guard.

Jeonathan Ezequiel Zapata, U.S. Navy, NE-4, Nicaragua
Zapata entered the U.S. at the age of 9 in 1996. He later joined the U.S. Navy.

Biography of Peter Lemon, recipient of the Outstanding American by Choice award:
Seven years after he became a naturalized American, Canadian-born Pete Lemon was serving in a U.S. Army Ranger platoon based in the jungles of Tay Ninh Province, Vietnam. The 19 year old Specialist was hoping to get a good night’s rest on the night of April 1, 1970, when his Fire Support Base came under attack. Exhausted, scared, and fighting for his life, Lemon was bleeding from numerous shrapnel wounds in his head, back, and neck from an enemy mortar that exploded near his foxhole. Specialist Lemon was fortunate. That same mortar round had literally vaporized one of his close friends and fellow soldiers.

The battle raged for more than three hours at Fire Support Base Illingsworth, one of two small American outposts in the remote jungle region. Close to 400 enemy soldiers swarmed the small American position, and they had chosen the area of the perimeter defended by Pete's Platoon as their point of attack. Already the young soldier had successfully fought back two waves of enemy soldiers, survived the mortar attack, watched three friends die, and carried another wounded comrade to safety.

Pete Lemon furiously fought through two successive waves of enemy advances, determined that if he could survive THIS assault, the worst would be over. He was wounded a second time, when a third wave appeared poised to over run the perimeter. It seemed that all hope for survival was lost. "I said to myself, 'You're not going to make it through this one'," Pete later recalled. Determined to go down fighting, the intrepid soldier found a working machine gun and jumped to the top of the dirt wall embattlement and, in a fully exposed position, continued to fire at the enemy.

Wounded yet a third time in that final assault, and reduced to having to fend off the enemy in hand-to-hand combat, somehow the fearless Army Ranger survived the night and repelled the enemy attack. In the days that followed he replayed the vicious battle in his head and was haunted in dreams from his hospital bed. Every man in his platoon had been wounded. Dead were three of his closest friends, Casey Waller, Nathan Mann and Brent Street. His own wounds would require more than a month of hospitalization, yet he had refused to be evacuated until the other wounded had been flown to a field hospital. Peter Lemon's war was over, and within six months he had returned to his adopted hometown in Michigan as an American hero. He was later awarded the Medal of Honor by President Nixon in 1971.

Today, Pete Lemon is the proud father of three children, works as a professional speaker for corporations and associations, and volunteers his free time to schools, veterans groups and other organizations. He is the author of a book and the producer of a documentary film entitled, Beyond the Medal: A Journey from Their Hearts to Yours, which he dedicated to his fallen comrades.

Ignite @ Google I/O; Submit Your Talk

2009-05-01T17:03:19+00:00

Ignite is coming to Google I/O later this month. On May 27th, the first afternoon of the conference, I'll be hosting an Ignite at the Moscone Center. As with all Ignites each speaker will only get 20 slides that each auto-advance every 15 seconds for a total of five minutes. We'll be looking for talks that geeks will like. Think of hacks, how-to's, and insights. If you're not sure what an Ignite talk looks like check out the Ignite Show. You have until May 11th to submit your talk.

Ammunition

2009-05-01T17:03:03+00:00

Ammunition

Government employee pay, benefits, personnel management

2009-05-01T17:03:03+00:00

Government employee pay, benefits, personnel management

Firearms and explosives

2009-05-01T17:03:03+00:00

Firearms and explosives

Government investigations

2009-05-01T17:03:03+00:00

Government investigations

Internet

2009-05-01T17:03:03+00:00

Internet

Health care costs and insurance

2009-05-01T17:03:03+00:00

Health care costs and insurance

Licensing and registrations

2009-05-01T17:03:03+00:00

Licensing and registrations

Abortion

2009-05-01T17:03:03+00:00

Abortion

Unemployment insurance

2009-05-01T17:03:03+00:00

Unemployment insurance

Assault weapons

2009-05-01T17:03:03+00:00

Assault weapons

Firearms control

2009-05-01T17:03:03+00:00

Firearms control

Where Week 2009

2009-05-01T17:02:19+00:00

Where Week, five days when geohackers across the world descend on Silicon Valley, is coming up. WhereCamp, the unconference put on by Where 2.0 attendees has been scheduled. This year it will happen at SocialText in Palo Alto on Friday May 22nd and Saturday May 23rd 2009. There will be unconference sessions during the day and a hackfest in the evening.

Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP Files Class Action Suit against Sequenom, Inc. (Business Wire)

2009-05-01T17:02:00+00:00

SAN DIEGO----Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP today announced that a class action has been commenced in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California on behalf of purchasers of Sequenom, Inc. common stock during the period between June 4, 2008 and April 29, 2009 .

New TALF program launches in June (AP)

2009-05-01T17:01:47+00:00

The Federal Reserve announced Friday that it will launch a much-awaited program in June to bolster commercial real-estate lending.

Bridge deaths dad faces execution

2009-05-01T17:01:40+00:00

A man who threw four children to their deaths from a bridge is sentenced to death in the US state of Alabama.

Bridge deaths dad faces execution

2009-05-01T17:01:40+00:00

A man who threw four children to their deaths from a bridge is sentenced to death in the US state of Alabama.

Jack Dangermond Interview 3 of 3: The Geoweb

2009-05-01T17:01:19+00:00

Jack Dangermond is the founder and CEO of ESRI. ESRI's software is used by every level of government around the world. You can see ESRI's influence in online mapping tools from Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! and FortiusOne. I had the opportunity to interview him over the phone on April 20, 2009. In this portion of the interview we discuss the history of GIS and online mapping. Jack will be speaking at Where 2.0 on May 20th in San Jose. You can use whr09rdr for 20% off at registration.

ArtWerk's map of his "beloved Europe"

2009-05-01T17:01:16+00:00

ArtWerk drew this map of Europe, titled "Where I Live." Be sure to read the lively debate over at Flickr, both in the annotated notes and the comments.

Can't see the video? Click here

The iTunes App Store and One-hit Wonders

2009-05-01T17:00:19+00:00

Thousands of sellers created the 40,000 apps that have appeared in the U.S. iTunes app store. Measured in terms of apps per seller, developer and vendor engagement has gotten stronger over time. The above average (mean) is somewhat misleading: 52% of sellers have produced just one app, and 80% have released 3 or fewer. Certain types of apps (e.g. electronic books) are easier to create, thus inflating the overall average app per seller. The disparity in complexity across categories is captured in the chart below. Aside from Books, Travel and Education apps also tend to be easy to develop and launch. The number of apps per seller also depends on whether one is interested in Paid or Free apps.

Group wants Senate to get 'techy'

2009-05-01T17:00:06+00:00

A bipartisan group of seven senators would like the upper chamber to join the digital age.

GE Appoints Two Company Officers (Business Wire)

2009-05-01T17:00:00+00:00

FAIRFIELD, Conn.----GE today announces the appointment of two new company officers. GE currently has 187 GE officers globally. GE officers lead large revenue generating businesses or are in critical functional roles, helping to drive growth.

Gates Suggestion Would Move Guantánamo Onshore

2009-05-01T17:00:00+00:00

NEW YORK – Defense Secretary Robert Gates suggested in congressional testimony Thursday that as many as 100 Guantánamo detainees could be transferred to U.S. soil and held without trial.

Del. agency sorry for saying what not to say (AP)

2009-05-01T16:59:48+00:00

AP - Delaware's Transportation Secretary has apologized after a department newsletter on diversity offended minority employees by spelling out many of the slurs that it advised workers not to use.

Del. agency sorry for saying what not to say

2009-05-01T16:59:47+00:00

DOVER, Del. (AP) -- Delaware's Transportation Secretary has apologized after a department newsletter on diversity offended minority employees by spelling out many of the slurs that it advised workers not to use....

Linux Journal Announces Winners of its 2009 Readers' Choice Awards (Linux Journal)

2009-05-01T16:58:33+00:00

Linux Journal has announced the winners of its annual Linux Journal Readers' Choice Awards. The results are not particularly surprising. Favorite Primary Linux Distribution of Choice - Ubuntu; Favorite Desktop Environment - GNOME; Favorite Web Browser - Firefox; Favorite E-Mail Client - Mozilla Thunderbird; and that's just for starters.

Whatever Happened to OOXML? (ComputerWorld)

2009-05-01T16:58:10+00:00

Glyn Moody observes that OOXML has not been as big a problem as many had thought. "All-in-all, I think things have gone much better in the office sector than I or many others feared when OOXML gained its 'approval' from ISO. OOXML has not caught on, and there is every chance that ODF will become a widely-used national and international standard."

Las Vegas entertainer Danny Gans dead at 52 (AP)

2009-05-01T16:56:30+00:00

Danny Gans, one of the most popular entertainers on the Las Vegas Strip for the last decade, died in his sleep. He was 52.

Life term for acid attack rapist

2009-05-01T16:55:38+00:00

An obsessed fan who raped a TV presenter and arranged an acid attack on her which left her with permanent injuries is jailed for life.

Adam Williamson: Funny

2009-05-01T16:49:10+00:00

Slashdot does give you a good laugh sometimes. There’s an interesting story there about music copyright infringement back at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries. The story mentions that the publishers fought the infringement - which was basically unauthorized copies of sheet music being sent by mail - by asking the Post Office not to send the unauthorized copies.

Some wag gave the story the ‘deeppacketinspection’ tag. I like that

Linux Reaches 1% Usage Share

2009-05-01T16:46:00+00:00

je ne sais quoi writes "The April data is out for the Net Applications 'market share' survey of operating systems (more accurately referred to as a usage share). For the first time, Linux has reached 1%. This past month the Linux share increased by 0.12% which is well above the average monthly increase of 0.02%. Historically, the Net Applications estimate of market share has been lower than that of other organizations who measure this, but the abnormally large increase reported this month brings it closer to the median estimate of 1.11%. For other operating systems, Windows XP continued its slow decline by 0.64% to 62.21%, whereas Vista use is still increasing to 23.90%, but its rate of adoption is slowing. That is, this month's increase of 0.48% is well below the 12-month average increase of 0.78% and down from the peak rate of increase of 1.00% per month on average in January-February 2008. The total Windows share dropped to 87.90%. Mac OS use decreased slightly to 9.73% from 9.77%, but usage share of the iPhone and iPod Touch combined increased by 0.1%."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Informa joins growing list of tax exiles

2009-05-01T16:45:24+00:00

The media group plans to join the ranks of British companies moving their tax domicile overseas, arguing that an imminent change to UK law made a move to the Swiss tax system imperative

'Older' Madeleine image released

2009-05-01T16:44:58+00:00

An image of how Madeleine McCann might look now, if still alive, is released ahead of the second anniversary of her disappearance.

MasterCard stock slumps after revenue warning (Reuters)

2009-05-01T16:42:00+00:00

MasterCard Inc posted better-than-expected quarterly earnings on Friday but said revenue growth this year will fall short of its targets, sending its shares down 7 percent in afternoon trading.

Phishers Target Facebook Again - PC World

2009-05-01T16:41:46+00:00

(license: CC-BY-3.0 / LGPL-2.1+)

Phishers Target Facebook Again
PC World - Ellen Messmer
Phishing attacks that try to get Facebook users to enter their log-in credentials at a fraudulent site in order to steal them have plagued users for the past two days, with phishing traced back to FBstarter.
Facebook Fights Phishing Attacks ABC News
Facebook Targeted in Spam Scam eWeek
RedOrbit - CIO Today - ChannelWeb - MX Logic
all 115 news articles

Ford April sales off 32 pct, gains market share (AP)

2009-05-01T16:40:53+00:00

Record sales of its fuel-efficient Fusion helped Ford grab a bigger slice of the U.S. car market in April, even as its overall sales dropped 32 percent.

Chevron 1Q profit falls 64 pct as oil prices drop (AP)

2009-05-01T16:40:23+00:00

The top international oil companies were expected to deliver the ugliest first-quarter results in several years, and there were few surprises.

Web Zen: Architecture Zen

2009-05-01T16:35:03+00:00

artistic tanks
fairy doors
new islington
interactive floorplans
50 strange buildings
12 moving building facades
archidose

previously on web zen:
architecture zen 2008
Permalink for this edition. Web Zen is created and curated by Frank Davis, and re-posted here on Boing Boing with his kind permission. Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!)

Q's without A's: 6 mysteries about swine flu

2009-05-01T16:33:23+00:00

Government officials, public health experts and business leaders have faced a lot of questions about swine flu this week, and three words keep popping up in their answers: "We don't know."...

May Day turns violent in Turkey, Germany, Greece (Reuters)

2009-05-01T16:29:24+00:00

'Shell damage' seen in Sri Lanka haven

2009-05-01T16:25:15+00:00

UN satellite pictures appear to show shelling damage inside a government safe zone for civilians in Sri Lanka.

Game console carved from a tree

2009-05-01T16:24:40+00:00

Brandon sez, "I'm currently studying in Leiden in the Netherlands and upon exploring just outside the south side of town, I discovered this handsome sculpture of an arcade machine carved out of a tree trunk. The URL carved into it leads to a Dutch art group called Uitschot. For those who are unfamiliar with Dutch (not that I'm fluent), 'boom' (rhymes with 'home') means 'tree.'"'

Beeld 14: Gameboom. (Brandon)

RIM shares rise after analyst upgrade (Reuters)

2009-05-01T16:19:55+00:00

Shares of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion rose 4 percent on Friday after analysts at UBS Investment Research upgraded the stock and said the company stands to gain from the corporate side of its business once the economy rebounds.

Carol Ann Duffy chosen as UK poet laureate

2009-05-01T16:17:11+00:00

LONDON (AP) -- The centuries-old post of British poet laureate, bard to kings and queens, has been held by William Wordsworth, Alfred Lord Tennyson and Ted Hughes - but never, until Friday, by a woman....

Stormy Peters: A call to support open source software projects

2009-05-01T16:17:10+00:00

Many of you saw J5's call to support the GNOME Foundation. The initial response has been great! I wanted to follow up with a general call to support open source software projects financially.

The GNOME Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. By definition it must serve the general public and by definition it must be supported by the general public.

Our charter is not to be supported by a small subset of companies, but to be supported by a large group of companies and individuals. Remember 501(c)(6)'s are trade groups and are supported by a group of companies. Their charter is not to help the general public but to help the business of their group members. The GNOME Foundation is a 501(c)(3) - which helps the general public.

The GNOME Foundation has been lucky to have a group of companies that support us financially. With their help we've been able to do a lot of good things over the past 10 years. We've had annual conferences, hackfests, and programs like the accessibility outreach and women's outreach programs. And while a number of companies have expressed their interest in joining the GNOME Foundation and supporting us financially, the reality is, very few companies are adding anything to their budget this year.

But compare the GNOME Foundation's financial support from 12 companies to the FSF's model.

The FSF receives most of its funding from 1,000s of individuals. According to their 2007 tax forms, they raised $845,000 from the public. (That number probably includes companies, but it's mostly from individuals.)

That is a much stronger position to be in. Not only because they raised more money, but because they are supported by the many individuals.

Open source software has shown the strength of individuals in creating great products. In the FSF's model, they have also shown the strength of individuals in being able to financially support causes they believe in. Providing your own financial support enables you to do what is right for your project. (Companies don't prevent us from doing what is right. But when they provide funding, they set direction. For example, when we depend on them for funding for hackfests, we hold the hackfests they are interested in sponsoring. Luckily, they sponsor good things! However, there is much more we could do, like the GTK+ hackfest we wanted to have this year.)

Bradley Kuhn and I were talking at the Collaboration Summit and we were thinking we should have a campaign to encourage open source software fans (users and developers) to support open source software financially. Pick two projects, any projects, and support them. Here's a short list of some projects that are set up to receive donations and use the money to support their projects:

GNOME Foundation (And obviously I'm biased. :)
Free Software Foundation
Apache Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
GIMP
PostgreSQL
Plone
... and many, many more.

In addition, I'd encourage people to sign up for "subscription" plans. Having regular donations come in helps projects plan things.

I have a few more posts coming up:

Voice your opinion of how money should be spent. For example, voice your opinion on the mailing list when the budget is shared or when the call for plans goes out. (And if you aren't in favor of donating money to free software projects, share ideas on how things can be done with no budget or which things you'd like to see cut from the budget. Or how you'd like to obtain the money.)
Participate in your project's non-code plans:
- In GNOME's case, become a member of the Foundation and vote for people that support your positions! Not only is your vote very important, but having a strong membership helps the Foundation show what it has to offer when discussing our technology and our plans with potential partners and sponsors.
- If you have the interest or skills, join the GNOME marketing team - help create our messages to the general public or run campaigns like Friends of GNOME or a merchandising store.
- Speak about free software, why you believe in it and your project to the general public as well as at open source events.
- Help your friends use open source software. Don't push them but be there to help them install it, even if it's just one application like GIMP or OpenOffice. If it works well for them, they might come back and ask you for others. Encourage them to contribute (skill or money) if they have a good experience.

And of course, continue to write great code and create awesome free software projects!

Which projects will you support?

Hospital 'Probable' H1N1 Patient Worked While Sick

2009-05-01T16:15:46+00:00

New Hampshire is reporting two "probable cases" of swine flu and a third "suspected case," all involving Concord Hospital employees.

Simon McVittie: Implementing D-Bus clients with telepathy-glib (and telepathy-qt4)

2009-05-01T16:13:21+00:00

(The much-delayed part 2 in an ongoing series: shiny things in telepathy-glib)

Over a year ago I explained my first major round of work on telepathy-glib, with which it could be used to implement D-Bus services. I started to write this post shortly after, but then got distracted by a bee or something; recent discussion about having a D-Bus binding in GLib has finally prompted me to finish it.

The second major round of work on telepathy-glib dealt with implementing client code, and went sufficiently well that telepathy-qt4 (currently under development) uses essentially the same model.

Again, while telepathy-glib is intended for Telepathy implementors, I think TpProxy's ideas are generically useful, particularly for "large" D-Bus APIs.

Some background: dbus-glib and libtelepathy

The life-cycle of a DBusGProxy (PD clipart credit: karderio and Andy)

The API provided by dbus-glib for client code is, er, rather less than ideal. The basic object is DBusGProxy, which has a few problems.

There's one per interface, rather than one per object; this leads to a maze of twisty GObjects, all suspiciously similar. Our old client library, libtelepathy, got round this by subclassing DBusGProxy to make helper objects called TpChan, TpConn etc., which were simultaneously the proxy for the "main" interface (Channel, Connection etc.), and a factory for proxies for the other interfaces (like Channel.Type.Text and Channel.Interface.Password). This still wasn't ideal, but it was a start.

If you use a DBusGProxy in any way after it has emitted the destroy signal, this is considered to be invalid use of the API, and dbus-glib asserts all over the place. We'd rather it didn't do that - remote objects becoming invalid is a fact of life, and if you don't immediately discard all your references to those objects, remote operations on them should just give you a runtime error. You have to be prepared to handle such runtime errors already, because any IPC call can fail at any time.

The main API for calling methods uses varargs and is rather subtle. Notably, the calling convention for variant parameters (of D-Bus signature 'v') is not consistent with the calling convention for any other container. For any other container, for instance a GPtrArray *, you pass in a GPtrArray ** pointing to a GPtrArray * variable containing NULL; on success, a pointer to a new GPtrArray is written into that variable. For variant parameters, though, you must pass in a GValue * pointing to a zero-filled GValue, and the result will be written into that GValue.

dbus-binding-tool generates thin wrappers around this method-calling API which provide type-safety, although they can't directly specify a non-default timeout.

As for signals, before binding to a signal, you have to tell dbus-glib about its signature. This tells dbus-glib how it should push the signal arguments onto the C stack (in GObject terminology: how it should marshal them), to match the signature of the signal-handler function.

The documentation claims that this isn't necessary for objects supporting the Introspect method, but that's untrue - on the other hand, if the documented behaviour actually happened, I would consider this to be a critical bug in dbus-glib, since it would enable remote objects to crash dbus-glib clients (by causing signal arguments to be pushed onto the stack in a way that does not match the signature of the signal handler).

Of course, the signal-adding function takes varargs, and has to be called exactly once per signal per object. If you don't, dbus-glib asserts when you connect to the signal; if you call it twice, dbus-glib asserts anyway.

`TpProxy`

TpProxy is a GObject subclass vaguely inspired by Python's dbus.proxy.ProxyObject. It isn't a subclass of DBusGProxy, which lets us encapsulate dbus-glib almost completely - in fact, all the references to DBusGProxy are in a separate header, proxy-subclass.h, only used by subclasses of TpProxy (as opposed to normal library API users).

TpProxy instances are per-remote-object (per-object-path) like in dbus-python, rather than per-interface like in dbus-glib or QtDBus. As explained below, I believe that this is the most natural object mapping for D-Bus interfaces; in practice it tends to lead to clearer code for us, since one remote object often maps nicely to one UI element (of course, if your objects only have one interface, this approach is no better or worse than dbus-glib's).

TpProxy provides support for the following common D-Bus things:

Calling methods
Connecting to signals
Objects becoming invalid
Objects with optional interfaces
Extensibility

It doesn't currently provide any particular help with Properties - the Properties interface is just another interface as far as we're concerned. We find that, in practice, that's not a problem (even though we use D-Bus properties extensively).

In telepathy-qt4 we basically reinvented TpProxy in C++, as Tp::DBusProxy. I've put in some comments below illustrating how the general ideas we used in TpProxy translate into a different object mapping.

Calling methods

Method calls on TpProxy are done through auto-generated wrapper functions, much like DBusGProxy. These look something like this:

typedef void (*tp_cli_channel_callback_for_close) (TpChannel *proxy,
    /* any 'out' arguments would go here - Close() doesn't have any */
    const GError *error, gpointer user_data,
    GObject *weak_object);

TpProxyPendingCall *tp_cli_channel_call_close (TpChannel *proxy,
    gint timeout_ms,
    /* any 'in' arguments would go here - Close() doesn't have any */
    tp_cli_channel_callback_for_close callback,
    gpointer user_data,
    GDestroyNotify destroy,
    GObject *weak_object);

Methods for some interfaces, like DBus.Properties, are available on TpProxy itself; others, like Telepathy's Channel.anything, are only available on a particular subclass, like TpChannel.

Things to note here:

It's an asynchronous call with a callback. General design principle: "this is IPC, get over it". We don't try to hide the fact that IPC is taking place by doing pseudo-blocking calls.
The timeout is explicit (although you can always pass -1 to let libdbus pick a "reasonable" default for you). This is because the remote service might not respond, and API users should be at least vaguely aware of this: "this is IPC, get over it".
The callback isn't a GCallback; it has an explicit signature, for some semblance of type-safety (it's not much, but it's better than nothing).
The callback takes a GError, because any IPC call can fail for any reason.
A TpProxyPendingCall * is returned. This is a pointer to an object that only exists until just after the callback is called (so you can ignore it if you don't want it), with a method you can call to cancel the method call (with hindsight this is not ideal, and if I was writing this API now, I'd use gio's GCancellable). "Cancel" is perhaps slightly misleading: the method call still takes place (it was already in libdbus's outgoing queue) but the result gets ignored and the callback isn't called. This is mostly so you an object can forget all the calls it was busy making at the time that the results become irrelevant (e.g. the object is destroyed).
There is an extra weak_object argument, which is weakly referenced and is passed to the callback: in practice, most users of telepathy-glib use this as well as or instead of user_data. If the weak_object runs out of references, the callback is automatically cancelled, which means that in practice, explicit cancellation is almost never needed.
The generated code has as its first argument a suitable subclass of TpProxy, in this case TpChannel (we tell the code generator about subclasses).
You can't see it in the API, but the TpProxy gains an extra ref while a method call is in progress, so you never have to worry about what happens if the proxy gets unreffed during a method call.
There's an explicit destructor for the user_data, which is called even if you "cancel" the method call.

In telepathy-qt4, these methods are on small generated helper classes similar to dbus-python's dbus.Interface, one per interface (we provide accessors for them on the non-generated DBusProxy subclass). Instead of using callbacks, we return a temporary QObject per call, which emits a Qt signal on success or failure (that's how all async calls in QtDBus work).

Connecting to signals

Similarly, signals have some generated functions:

typedef void (*tp_cli_channel_signal_callback_closed) (TpChannel *proxy,
    /* any arguments would go here - Closed doesn't have any */
    gpointer user_data, GObject *weak_object);
TpProxySignalConnection *tp_cli_channel_connect_to_closed (TpChannel *proxy,
    tp_cli_channel_signal_callback_closed callback,
    gpointer user_data,
    GDestroyNotify destroy,
    GObject *weak_object,
    GError **error);

API notes for these:

The callback doesn't take a GError any more, because signals can't fail; the weak_object and the user_data are the same as for method calls
This isn't actually a GObject signal at all: those aren't particularly typesafe, and lack namespacing. This might not be very binding-friendly, we haven't tried doing that yet... it might be worth introducing a signal with details, like in dbus-glib, for which these functions are "C bindings".
The returned TpProxySignalConnection lets you disconnect from the signal, just like the TpProxyPendingCall above; it can safely be ignored
Similarly, if the weak_object dies, then the signal automatically disconnects
It is possible for connecting to a signal to fail: this happens if the proxy doesn't actually have the requested interface. If this happens, it's graceful, not a crash. In practice, the flow of code is almost always such that error can safely be NULL because the interfaces are already known.

In telepathy-qt4 the per-interface generated helper classes emit Qt signals. In many cases, we end up proxying these signals by responding to them in the hand-written Tp::DBusProxy subclass by emitting a different signal, in order to give them a nicer representation.

Becoming invalid

This is IPC, and any error can happen to you at any time. We found that it was useful to have a general concept of "this object is no longer useful", so we introduced the concept of an object becoming invalidated.

The invalidation reason is stored on the object as a GError. If this GError is NULL (as it is initially), then the object is still expected to be valid; if it's non-NULL, the remote object has vanished and the local proxy no longer works.

There are several ways a TpProxy can become invalid:

its bus name falls off the bus (the process exited or crashed)
application-specific reasons (usually triggered by a D-Bus signal in a subclass, like the Telepathy Channel's Closed signal)
the GObject gets disposed

Method calls on an invalidated object always fail, with the invalidation reason as the error. This means that calling a method on a TpProxy should never crash your process. The method's callback has to be prepared to handle an error in any case, because this is Sparta^WIPC, so there's no loss in giving it another error.

Connecting to signals on an invalidated object always fails, and any existing signal connections are disconnected when it becomes invalidated. This means that if a new remote object appears, and it happens to have the same object path, bus name etc. as the old one, you won't get its signals.

A TpProxy can either be bound to a unique bus name or a well-known bus name. In the equivalent code in telepathy-qt4, we call this "stateful" or "stateless" - these names don't capture the intention perfectly, but they're the best we could come up with.

A proxy for a stateful API like Telepathy's Channel should always bind to a unique name - when the unique name falls off the bus, the TpProxy becomes invalidated automatically, representing the fact that the Channel you had no longer exists, and nothing can be a perfect replacement for it (the VoIP call has already been terminated, you've already left the chatroom, or whatever - if you make another Channel, that's e.g. a distinct VoIP call).

A proxy for a stateless API like Telepathy's ConnectionManager, where an exiting process can disappear, be service-activated again, and still have exactly the same API, should bind to the well-known name. Proxies for well-known names aren't invalidated when the process exits.

Qt doesn't have a natural equivalent for GError, so the invalidation reasons in telepathy-qt4 are just a pair of strings, the namespaced name and the message - basically a libdbus DBusError. The principle is the same, though.

Optional interfaces

As mentioned above, TpProxy instances are per-remote-object (per-object-path) like in dbus-python, rather than per-interface like in dbus-glib or QtDBus. I believe that this is the most natural object mapping for the D-Bus object model, because the D-Bus interfaces on a remote object can behave like any of these:

classes and subclasses (Telepathy.Channel.Type.Text is a Telepathy.Channel)
shared interfaces (some Telepathy.Channel objects, of many Types, implement Telepathy.Channel.Interface.Group; any D-Bus object can implement DBus.Properties)
optional features (some Telepathy.Channel.Type.Text objects implement Telepathy.Channel.Interface.ChatStates, some do not)
discoverable extensions (some Telepathy.Channel.Type.Text objects implement Telepathy.Channel.Interface.Messages, which is more or less Text 2.0)

The way in which interfaces are discovered is also variable. The "classic" D-Bus way to discover interfaces would be to call Introspect. Telepathy services still support that style of introspection, but we don't use it for anything beyond d-feet:

Introspect returns a blob of XML, which you have to parse into something useful; if it was in a D-Bus data structure, you'd already have some sensible data structure.
Finding out more information about the supported interfaces than their names isn't very useful: in a static language like C you already need to know the methods, signals, properties and their signatures in order to write and compile your code, and in a dynamic language like Python consumers of Introspect end up being remotely crashable by services with unexpected method signatures (this is one of dbus-python's big mistakes in my opinion).
If a method that you want to call turns out to be missing, the worst that can happen (in a competently written service) is that it fails with a D-Bus error - and you have to handle D-Bus errors anyway, because this is IPC and anything could fail.
Static bindings like dbus-glib have poor support for removing interfaces for which C code exists at runtime, whereas Telepathy needs features like an IM connection that might or might not support avatars (we don't get to find out until we've successfully connected to the server).

Instead, our older interfaces have a method on the "base class" (Channel, Connection etc.) called GetInterfaces, which just returns an array of strings. Newer interfaces (like Account), and older interfaces that have been ported (like Channel), have a property called Interfaces which is, again, an array of strings - this lets us combine the download of the interfaces list with downloading other basic information in a GetAll call.

To cater for all these ways to use interfaces, the TpProxy base class has very basic support for interface discovery - you can ask it whether it supports an interface, and you can tell it that it does, in fact, support an interface.

Asking which interfaces are supported is directly useful for library users; it's also used as a check by the generated method-call and signal-connection stubs, which return a canned error (Telepathy.Error.NotImplemented in Telepathy's case) if the object isn't known to have the interface.

Telling TpProxy that it does support an interface is intended for use by subclasses, and might have been protected if we were writing C++: what happens in practice is that a concrete subclass like TpChannel knows how to discover the fully supported interfaces for this particular object, does so, and calls methods on the TpProxy to tell it which interfaces can work.

Extensibility

The API stubs used by TpProxy to call methods and bind to signals are generated from XML documents containing an augmented form of D-Bus introspection data. These XML documents contain various Telepathy-specific extensions, but none of the extensions are language-specific - telepathy-glib, telepathy-python and telepathy-qt4 all operate from exactly the same XML specification. telepathy-qt4's different object-mapping did require us to tighten up some rules that were previously only conventions, but even so, the format is the same. I think this is vitally important - it just doesn't scale to have one set of language-specific annotations in a D-Bus API for each language that will have bindings.

One thing that we make heavy use of is what I call "Ugly_Case", which is camel-case with underscores at word boundaries. This gives us a simple, unambiguous and foolproof rule to use in code generators whenever we generate any of the popular conventions for identifiers:

CamelCase: delete underscores
javaCamelCase: force everything before the first underscore to lower case, then delete underscores
lower_case: force everything to lower case, retain underscores
UPPER_CASE: force everything to upper case, retain underscores

dbus-glib, by contrast, applies a complex and subtly buggy algorithm to the CamelCase D-Bus names, which results in our SendDTMF method being mapped into GLib as send_dt_mf, and requires that telepathy-glib's Python reimplementation of dbus-binding-tool uses a bug-for-bug compatible implementation (we ended up reimplementing dbus-binding-tool in order to generate the TpProxy-based bindings).

Our code generation tools are still rather ad-hoc, because so is our spec format, but for draft interfaces it's possible to copy them into individual projects and use them to generate additional methods for TpProxy or any subclass. This is how we implement unfinished APIs like geolocation in Empathy, for instance.

The Interfaces or GetInterfaces hook described above is entirely usable for these extension interfaces, and in fact that's how they're set up.

In telepathy-qt4, the generated method stubs are genuine C++ methods, so we can't just append methods to an existing class: this is why we have one helper class per interface, so individual clients can generate a helper class for their particular version of an unfinished API, and instantiate an object of this class attached to a particular Tp::DBusProxy.

When an interface becomes stable, it can be added to the set of interfaces for which code is generated in telepathy-glib or telepathy-qt4, at which point any client or service that was already using the final draft of that interface can easily be ported to the library version using sed (the API remains the same).

Becoming ready

The concept of being "ready" does not directly exist in TpProxy, but is implemented in TpChannel, TpConnection and TpConnectionManager. The idea is that a freshly created proxy object isn't really fully usable yet - you have to connect to basic signals and recover the initial state of the remote object, as well as checking which extension interfaces are supported. In many well-designed D-Bus APIs you can do this initial setup with a few signal connections and a DBus.Properties.GetAll call.

After doing that initial setup (which has to be done asynchronously, because it's IPC), the TpProxy subclass has a local cache of the remote object's state (not necessarily in the same format as the representation on the bus), which can be accessed synchronously at any time, and will be updated in response to change-notification signals.

TpChannel and subclasses like it have explicit support for checking for readiness, and having a callback called when the object is ready or invalidated (whichever happens first). The "ready" property also supports the GObject notify signal.

telepathy-qt4 took this concept and ran with it - there is library support for objects that can become ready, including a mixin. If I had as much time to work on telepathy-glib as I wish I had, this would be one of the first telepathy-qt4 features to be added to telepathy-glib.

Features becoming ready

Going beyond that, in an extensible framework like Telepathy it's probable that not every client understands (or wants to understand) every feature of every object, so it's highly inefficient for every proxy object to subscribe to all the change notification signals and cache all the remote state on the off-chance that the library user wants them.

In the API for TpContact (which is not actually a TpProxy for various reasons) we introduced the concept of optional features; telepathy-qt4 extended this idea throughout the library. The idea is that each library user knows which of the optional features are "interesting" to it, and makes a single asynchronous call (which expands into a series of D-Bus calls inside the library) to download the state for core functionality plus all of the selected features, and subscribe to change notification for all of those.

This is another telepathy-qt4 thing that telepathy-glib still needs to catch up with; until someone works out how to make the clone() syscall apply to programmers, I fear all libraries are doomed to lag behind how their designers want them to look :-)

Demjanjuk loses deportation case

2009-05-01T16:13:16+00:00

A US federal appeals court denies a stay of deportation to alleged Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk, wanted in Germany.

Demjanjuk loses deportation case

2009-05-01T16:13:16+00:00

A US federal appeals court denies a stay of deportation to alleged Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk.

Charles Clarke 'ashamed' to be Labour MP

2009-05-01T16:12:17+00:00

Former home secretary Charles Clarke is the latest MP to go on the attack against Gordon Brown, declaring himself 'ashamed' to be a Labour MP.

MasterCard hit by fall in credit card spending

2009-05-01T16:11:42+00:00

The world's second largest electronic payments processor, said first-quarter profits fell 18%, hit by a stronger US dollar and a sharp drop in US credit card spending

Photos: Piper Aircraft Acquired by Imprimis to Secure New Growth Opportunities (PR Newswire)

2009-05-01T16:10:00+00:00

New owner fully supports PiperJet development

Iranians Outwit Censors With Falun Gong Software

2009-05-01T16:04:00+00:00

Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that since last year more than 400,000 Iranians began surfing the uncensored Web using software created for the Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that has been suppressed by the Chinese government since 1999. More than 20 countries now use increasingly sophisticated blocking and filtering systems for Internet content, according to Reporters Without Borders, including Iran, China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Syria. The creators of the software seized upon by Iranians are members of the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, based largely in the United States and closely affiliated with Falun Gong. Interestingly enough, the United States government and the Voice of America have financed some of the circumvention technology efforts, and a coalition is organizing to push for more Congressional financing of anti-filtering efforts, bringing together dissidents of Vietnam, Iran, the Uighur minority of China, Tibet, Myanmar, Cuba, Cambodia, Laos, as well as the Falun Gong, to lobby Congress for the financing. 'What is our leverage toward a country like Iran? Very little,' said Michael Horowitz, a fellow at the Hudson Institute. 'Suppose we have the capacity to make it possible for the president of the United States at will to communicate with hundreds of thousands of Iranians at no risk or limited risk? It just changes the world.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AIPAC prosecution dropped

2009-05-01T16:03:51+00:00

Prosecutors say legal rulings have diminished the chances of winning convictions.

Manufacturing contraction slows in April, ISM says - MarketWatch

2009-05-01T16:01:28+00:00

Manufacturing contraction slows in April, ISM says
MarketWatch
By marketwatch The factory sector contracts again in April, but the pace of decline slows, according to the Institute for Supply Management index.
Manufacturing rebound in the works CNNMoney.com
RPT-TABLE-US ISM index 40.1 in April vs 36.3 in March Reuters
Briefing.com - International Business Times - msnbc.com
all 404 news articles

Stocks waver on mixed manufacturing, earnings news (AP)

2009-05-01T16:00:46+00:00

Investors aren't making many big moves at the start of May following the market's best month in nine years. Stocks wavered in a tight range around the flat line following mixed data on manufacturing and lackluster earnings reports.

Swine flu transfer case confirmed

2009-05-01T16:00:22+00:00

A man from Falkirk becomes the first person in the UK to contract swine flu without having visited Mexico.

Luis Villa: gourmet!

2009-05-01T15:59:54+00:00

New GNOME Journal is out, and with it is a nice article on gourmet. Gourmet is a pretty awesome little piece of software and deserves more users and more love. Go check it out, and cook something yummy for yourself. :)

Steinar H. Gunderson: Testing Varnish

2009-05-01T15:58:30+00:00

In order not to kill my poor Apache (which has recently been downgraded from worker to prefork due to ImageMagick threading bugs), I have a Squid reverse-caching proxy in front of all my personal web sites. However, lately I've been less than impressed -- in particular, it seems that Squid 3.1 (which I need to run for IPv6 support) has large issues with memory leaks, leaking 400MB/day or so. (It also seems to grow slower and slower together with the memory leaks.) Worse still, the developers have acknowledged the bug and known about it for months, but seem unable to fix it. So, since Varnish is frequently touted as the end-all reverse HTTP proxy, I finally decided to give it a go, even though I've been less than impressed with much of what is written and said by some of the core developers.

It turns out the ride was pretty bumpy, though -- in just a few hours of testing, I got more than enough issues that I decided to leave it alone. Below is a non-exhaustive lists of the problems I found:

Varnish does not have persistent caching -- every time I restart it, the entire cache goes away. The latest Subversion snapshots are supposed to remedy this, but when I tried, it would never run for more than a few seconds before the entire daemon (including the parent daemon that is supposed to restart the daemon if it crashes!) went down. (The rest of my testing was with 2.0.4, the latest stable release.) This is a big deal for me since I'm not a newspaper where 100000 clients hammer on the same 100 pages all at once; I have a long tail of hundreds of thousands of objects that are expensive to regenerate, and if I could cache an object that was requested once a month, I would be very happy to do so. (I solve this to a certain extent by having my own cache layer, but that seems pretty backwards.)
The documentation is, overall, woefully incomplete, and at times very confusing. In particular, it's not really easy to figure out what a valid VCL token is -- do I need "" around it? How do I put a " in a string? The vcl(7) man page says that backslashes inside "" have no special meaning, yet the VCL purging documentation warns me that I may need to double or quadruple backslashes in regexes given to purge(). The vcl(7) man page also tells me that in some specific example, "\r\n" is inserted all by itself, but I doesn't seem to mention any specific rules for why or when.
Logging is pretty rudimentary. I have the choice of either varnishlog, which spits out 20-30 lines for each request, or varnishncsa, which makes a very simple Apache-like log with no flexibility or any sort of cache information. Neither seems to be very useful for timing information about my backend, or a long-term overview of what actually gets cached or not. (varnishtop might be better -- I don't know.)
The UI is, generally, less than user-friendly. I can (thankfully!) load in a new configuration without restarting Varnish, but to do that I need to telnet to a very rudimentary CLI (stuff like history is for wimps), load the configuration into an unused name (or discard one of the old ones first) and then "use" it. What's wrong with "/etc/init.d/varnish reload"?
Speaking of the init script (the Debian package is maintained by Redpill Linpro and is part of the Varnish tree via Subversion externals, so I think it's fair to include it in the evaluation), it doesn't actually seem to check much if Varnish came up or not -- it just says "OK" even if Varnish couldn't even listen on port 80. It does seem to catch VCL syntax errors, though.
If someone requests a large file (larger than the total cache), Varnish dies with an assertion error. The only way around this seems to be to know all requests that would result in a large file (say, “all files on this vhost would be large”) and take Varnish out of the loop (with “pipe”) for those.
varnishstat has a very confusing number labeled “Hitrate ratio:” that is supposed to be the number of seconds for the number below, except it isn't on my machine (it seems to update very seldom, and at random).
VCL has very confusing parsing semantics. For instance, you cannot set anything unconditionally in vcl_pipe -- it must be within an if for some reason.
It's impossible to log anything from VCL. It's impossible to define local variables, short of inventing your own HTTP headers. Debugging anything is thus difficult at best.
From time to time, Varnish would just hiccup and start needing 15-20 seconds (slightly variable) to answer requests, and then suddenly go back to normal without any good indication of what happened. Could it be a backend issue? Again, impossible to say without proper timing information in the logs.
purge() with a string is buggy -- it doesn't handle "&&". Of course, since there's barely any logging (again!) it's pretty difficult to pin down exactly what's wrong.

Note that, of course, several of these are not relevant to Squid because they touch on functionality Squid simply doesn't have. Thus, it's a list of “problems I have with Varnish”, not “things that Squid does better than Varnish”. Still, it feels to me that Varnish just isn't made for my use case; I'd expect such issues from software labeled 0.3, not 2.0.4. :-) (I don't really care if it can handle 10k requests/second, because I don't have 10k requests/second. If you have 10k request/second and a consultant from Redpill Linpro to set it up, I'm sure you will find Varnish excellent. :-) )

So, at this point I gave up. Back to Squid we go, even with all its issues. Perhaps I should just kill -9 and restart it once a day...

Feds dropping charges against pro-Israel lobbyists

2009-05-01T15:57:40+00:00

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) -- Federal prosecutors moved Friday to dismiss espionage-related charges against two former pro-Israel lobbyists accused of disclosing classified U.S. defense information, ending a tortuous inside-the-Beltway legal battle rife with national security intrigue....

Earnings Preview: Chesapeake to report 1Q results (AP)

2009-05-01T15:57:17+00:00

Natural gas producer Chesapeake Energy is scheduled to report first-quarter earnings after the stock market closes Monday. The following is a summary of key developments during the period.

In Focus: Supreme Court Makes Pact To Lose Virginity By End Of Year

2009-05-01T15:56:54+00:00

WASHINGTON, DC—By an 8-1 vote Monday, the members of the U.S. Supreme Court collectively resolved to lose their virginity by Dec. 31, 2002.

Dividend.com: Met's Quarter Didn't Pay (TheStreet.com)

2009-05-01T15:56:27+00:00

MetLife posted a first-quarter loss of $574 million as revenue from premiums declined and investment losses mounted.

Is Bulls vs. Celtics best series ever? - FOXSports.com

2009-05-01T15:51:45+00:00

Globe and Mail

Is Bulls vs. Celtics best series ever?
FOXSports.com - Randy Hill
by Randy Hill According to the unsolicited goosebumps we've accumulated, the Boston Celtics and Chicago Bulls are threatening to serve up the greatest playoff series in NBA history.
Fitting conclusion on tap for Celtics and Bulls in Game 7 Rockford Register Star
In a Sensational Series, Despite Loss, Game 6 a Classic NBA.com
HoopsWorld - Locksmith Sports Picks - Newsday - USA Today
all 869 news articles

Chevron profits hit by weaker oil

2009-05-01T15:51:41+00:00

Chevron, the second largest oil company in the US, has posted a sharp fall in quarterly profits as the price of oil dropped from its peak.

LimeWire CEO Assures Congress: Privacy Safeguards Are in Place

2009-05-01T15:51:00+00:00

Congress decides to re-examine whether LimeWire and other P2P software pose threats to privacy and national security after an Iranian IP address downloads detailed schematics for president Obama’s helicopter. Wired.com obtains an advance copy of LimeWire's response to Congress.

Holger Levsen: great timing. not.

2009-05-01T15:50:20+00:00

Yesterday I booked a ticket for going to Cáceres in two days. Today I got ill. Guess I will stay in bed most of the next 24h.

Dutch parade attacker and policeman die (Reuters)

2009-05-01T15:48:20+00:00

'Cat Lady' Animal Cruelty Conviction Upheld

2009-05-01T15:46:07+00:00

The Massachusetts Appeals Court has upheld animal cruelty convictions against a woman who kept five starving cats and one underfed Great Dane in her Beacon Hill apartment.

Chrysler's speedy bankruptcy case gets started (AP)

2009-05-01T15:45:51+00:00

Attorneys for Chrysler LLC will ask a federal bankruptcy judge Monday to let the ailing automaker start using a new infusion of $4.5 billion in loans from the Treasury Department so it can operate under bankruptcy protection.

Proclamation Signed By The President Today Regarding Loyalty Day

2009-05-01T15:45:00+00:00

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary
--------------------------------------------------
For Immediate Release May 1, 2009

LOYALTY DAY, 2009
- - - - - - -
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

More than two centuries ago, our Nation's Founders declared the birth of a new Nation and began an experiment in self-governance. The young Republic committed itself to protecting the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all citizens. These ideals inspired loyalty to the young Nation and moved volunteers to fight for their independence.

Generations later, these founding principles continue to unify and command the loyalty of the American people. The United States has expanded in size, increased in population, and grown in diversity, yet the promise of liberty and the pursuit of happiness arouse the patriotism and loyalty of Americans anew. Just as early settlers pledged to do their part to build the new Nation, now recent immigrants -- loyal to the very same values -- are helping America fulfill its promise.
We enjoy these blessings of liberty only because brave patriots have answered the call of duty. The men and women of the United States Armed Forces exemplify loyalty to our highest ideals, as do those who have fought valiantly for civil rights within our borders. These Americans and many others have made enormous sacrifices, and our Nation is grateful for their selflessness and unshakeable loyalty.

The Congress, by Public Law 85-529, as amended, has designated May 1 of each year as "Loyalty Day." On Loyalty Day, we honor our Nation and remember with pride the courageous individuals who help keep it safe and strong and who honor its legacy of freedom and equal opportunity.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2009, as Loyalty Day. I call upon all the people of the United States to join in support of this national observance and to display the flag of the United States on Loyalty Day.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this first day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-third.

BARACK OBAMA

# # #

He will rock you! Queen fan pays £7,000 for lesson from May

2009-05-01T15:43:46+00:00

A Queen fan wins a private guitar lesson with Brian May after bidding more than £7,500 at a charity auction in London.

Letter from the President to the Speaker of the House of Representatives

2009-05-01T15:43:00+00:00

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secrectary

For Immediate Release
May 1, 2009

Below is the text of a letter from the President to the Speaker of the House sent April 30, 2009:

TO THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
April 30, 2009

Dear Madam Speaker:

This week, as reports of the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak around the world were made public, my Administration has been carefully monitoring the situation, coordinating State and local responses, assessing the risks here in the United States, and cooperating with international organizations and health officials around the globe.

Out of an abundance of caution, I asked the Congress earlier this week to consider a proposal to provide $1.5 billion to enhance our Nation's capability to respond to the potential spread of this outbreak. As the attached detailed request reflects, these funds should be provided with maximum flexibility to allow us to address this emerging situation. Among the uses of these funds could be: supplementing anti-viral stockpiles; developing a vaccine; supporting monitoring, diagnostic, and public health response capabilities; assisting international efforts to stem this outbreak and to address related international needs.

Already, Federal, State, and local public health officials are working day and night to respond quickly and effectively wherever cases of this flu may be found and to prepare the entire country for any potential progression of this outbreak.

I urge the Congress to act expeditiously in considering this important request, the details of which are set forth in the enclosed letter from the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Sincerely,
BARACK OBAMA

LGBT Partners & Summer Associates Reception

2009-05-01T15:41:52+00:00

Presented By:
Date: July 8, 2009
Time: 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm

BASF recognizes the benefits that minority and LGBT law students and young lawyers receive when afforded opportunities to network with other lawyers and successful partners who look like them and/or have similar experiences. Established in 2007, BASF's annual Partner-Summer Associates Receptions provide an opportunity for networking, meeting mentors and appreciating the achievements of minority and LGBT partners in the Bay Area.

Please RSVP by July 2nd to DiversityEvents@sfbar.org. and specify the name of this event in your reply.

African American Partners & Summer Associates Reception

2009-05-01T15:41:17+00:00

Presented By:
Date: June 25, 2009
Time: 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm

BASF recognizes the benefits that minority and LGBT law students and young lawyers receive when afforded opportunities to network with other lawyers and successful partners who look like them and/or have similar experiences. Established in 2007, BASF's annual Partner-Summer Associates Receptions provide an opportunity for networking, meeting mentors and appreciating the achievements of minority and LGBT partners in the Bay Area.

Please RSVP by June 19th to DiversityEvents@sfbar.org. and specify the name of this event in your reply.

Minority Summer Associates Reception

2009-05-01T15:40:10+00:00

Presented By:
Date: June 11, 2009
Time: 5:30 pm - 8:00 pm

Please join us at our annual Minority Summer Associates Reception as we celebrate the 20th Anniversary of BASF’s “Goals and Timetables for Minority Hiring and Advancement” initiative, and honor its founders: Robert Borton, Jim Brosnahan, Kevin Fong, Sergio Garcia, Ray Marshall, Dru Ramey, and Guy Rounsaville. This initiative is the cornerstone of BASF’s diversity efforts, and has lead to the establishment of numerous diversity programs within the organization.

The reception will be a great opportunity to learn about “Goals and Timetables” in action today, honor these champions of diversity for their groundbreaking contribution to diversity in the legal profession, and introduce minority summer associates and law clerks to a cross section of the San Francisco legal community to encourage them to continue their legal careers in San Francisco.

Please RSVP by June 4th to DiversityEvents@sfbar.org. and specify the name of this event in your reply.

Moody's downgrades KeyCorp, citing credit risks (AP)

2009-05-01T15:39:19+00:00

Shares of KeyCorp slipped Friday after Moody's Investors Service downgraded its ratings, citing the ability of the regional bank's earnings to absorb credit losses in coming months.

Latino Partners & Summer Associates Reception

2009-05-01T15:38:43+00:00

Presented By:
Date: July 16, 2009
Time: 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm

BASF recognizes the benefits that minority and LGBT law students and young lawyers receive when afforded opportunities to network with other lawyers and successful partners who look like them and/or have similar experiences. Established in 2007, BASF's annual Partner-Summer Associates Receptions provide an opportunity for networking, meeting mentors and appreciating the achievements of minority and LGBT partners in the Bay Area.

Please RSVP by July 10th to DiversityEvents@sfbar.org. and specify the name of this event in your reply.

Flir bucks the trends, reports large profit - Bizjournals.com

2009-05-01T15:38:10+00:00

Flir bucks the trends, reports large profit
Bizjournals.com
Infrared camera and systems maker Flir Systems Inc. increased revenue 15 percent and earnings 46 percent in the first quarter, compared with the same period last year.
Flir Posts Strong Q1 Photonics.com
Flir shares jump after strong quarter Hillsboro Argus - OregonLive.com
RTT News - Reuters
all 29 news articles

BAAM #21 May Day!

2009-05-01T15:36:07+00:00

The Boston Anti-Authoritarian Movement's 21st newsletter celebrates May Day 2009.

Man charged with two rapes in Radisson garage

2009-05-01T15:35:24+00:00

A man charged with raping two women in the garage of the Radisson Hotel on Stuart Street was ordered held in lieu of $1 million bail following his arraignment today, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office says.

Jose Rivera is charged with raping one woman on April 19 and another early this morning, the DA's office says, adding the April 19 victim was a worker at the hotel going to her job. Rivera's probation on an unrelated assault conviction in West Roxbury District Court was also revoked.

Innocent, etc.

Let's Rename Swine Flu As "Colbert Flu"

2009-05-01T15:24:00+00:00

Bruce Perens writes "The World Health Organization will no longer refer to Virus A(H1N1) as 'Swine Flu,' citing ethnic reactions to 'swine,' for example among middle-eastern cultures who feel that swine are unclean. Or, is it because meat packers are concerned that people might stop eating pork in fear of the virus? WHO suggests that the public select a new name for the virus. I suggest that we all start calling it The Colbert Flu, after the comedian and fake pundit who asked his audience to stuff a NASA poll so that a Space Station module would be named after him. What can we do to make the name stick?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Recently on Offworld

2009-05-01T15:22:44+00:00

Videogames should be more violent, not less.

Recently on Offworld, Ragdoll Metaphysics columnist Jim Rossignol takes the occasion of J.G. Ballard's death to argue that, with his future of boredom -- of calm consumer choices and deadened emotions -- realised, that videogames are an ideal safe excursion to violence and excitement, outlets for Ballard's "vast systems of competing psychopathies." Elsewhere we took a longer look at WINDOSiLL (above), the latest Flash creation from Vectorpark artist Patrick Smith, and its magical hyper-real surreality -- certainly one of the most physically expressed worlds in recent game memory. We also saw fantastic footage of Q-games' latest PixelJunk game, showing off the interplay of its realistically modeled particle/fluid mechanics, saw Bandcamp's hidden Defender stats-graph easter egg, watched Infinite Ammo's gorgeous paper-cut planar-platformer Paper Moon in motion, and cut paper of our own to assemble adorably lethal Team Fortress 2 models. Finally, we launched a 'One Shot' series of single-serve art doses with Katamari-head jellybeans, a Super Mario graveyard, and a Nintendo Entertainment System mouse, dug on Dr. Mario Dunnys, and showed off easily one of the best bits of press swag ever put to paper, with a neo-futuristic Space Invaders Extreme print signed by original game creator Tomohiro Nishikado himself.

Glimmers of hope on US economy

2009-05-01T15:20:07+00:00

The US manufacturing sector is still shrinking but at a much slower pace, a key survey showed, while battered US consumers started to feel more confident about the economy

Dr. Jill Biden to Deliver Spring 2009 Commencement Addresses

2009-05-01T15:19:00+00:00

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Vice President

__________________________________________________________________

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 1, 2009

Dr. Jill Biden to Deliver Spring 2009 Commencement Address

Dr. Jill Biden will serve as commencement speaker at Kingsborough Community College this year. Dr. Biden, an educator of 28 years, has taught English in community colleges for the past 15 years and continues to teach English courses at a DC-area community college. Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York is Brooklyn’s only community college and serves approximately 30,000 students per year.

Dr. Biden will address graduates, family members, and faculty at Kingsborough on Friday June 12, 2009.

More details will be announced at a later date.

###

Patrick Focused On His Job, Not Supreme Court

2009-05-01T15:18:21+00:00

Gov. Deval Patrick says he's "120 percent" focused on being governor and replacing retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter is not in his plans.

Regulators Said to Plan Stress-Test Disclosures May 7 - Bloomberg

2009-05-01T15:16:16+00:00