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I heard the same. I did a bit of googling and came up with this article (although it is only an abstract). There's also a comment and reply to this article, but it isn't accessible, unfortunately. And here's a news article. From the looks of it, they had mixed success because the quality of the video tape was so poor.

For a geologist (I'm one) seemingly mundane outcrops of rock can be as distinctive as, oh [struggling with analogy] the US Capitol Building versus the UK Houses of Parliament. Both the rock and the way it is naturally weathered can be quite unique, almost like a fingerprint, and it will be very familiar to a geologist that worked in the area.

Cross reference the geology with a bit of extra information (e.g., time of day, shadow height and angle, or some general idea of where someone is), and it could really narrow down the possibilities. It's even better if the camera moves, because it becomes possible to recover some types of 3D information using stereo photogrammetry techniques

It is interesting that after those early "video in a canyon" clips of bin Laden most of the terrorist video clips supposedly from Afganistan (or Pakistan?) have had a bland-looking sheet or some other backdrop. As you suggest, I think the terrorists learned the lesson that they were giving away more information than they thought. The same is true for almost any outdoor scene.

I'm sure I've seen this before, possibly found out about it on /.

Here's an article from March 2005
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/ 03/10/MNGFIBN6PO1.DTL

It's only one of many theories. The wikipedia page that points to the article above discusses them all
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_extinction

In regards to people saying that there could be alternative fuel sources such as wind, solar, etc. as alternatives to fossil fuels, people have been saying that for years, but there's always one problem (at least in the U.S.), and that's that wherever the government or some corporation tries to build the facilities for clean power generation, someone makes up a lame excuse like it's "unsightly" (see for example this page , which describes the difficulty Cape Cod is having in building a wind farm). Even environmental groups such as the Audobon society have opposed plans to build them in some cases, though admittedly the Audobon society had given its support to the Cape Wind project. I do hope, though, that eventually the higher gas prices and other energy prices (for example, in Connecticut, UI is planning on raising their rates by this year), not to mention the security threats posed by dependence on foreign oil, will force people to reconsider.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2 007/07/24/BAG9NR67253.DTL

"The problem began when breakers in the utility's transmission service opened for an unknown reason, Chiu said. Every time workers attempted to close those breakers to restore service, it caused voltage fluctuations -- high and low flows of electricity through the system -- that impacted PG&E's Martin Substation in Daly City, she said."

Basically, PG&E is run by beancounters.

Supposedly the power has been back on for some time but craigslist is still down.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/ 07/24/BAG9NR67253.DTL

Some of the sites, including Craigslist, remained down even after power was restored, as administrators ensured that data in the server hadn't been damaged, among other checks.

from the article... "Some of the sites, including Craigslist, remained down even after power was restored, as administrators ensured that data in the server hadn't been damaged, among other checks."

It's well after 10pm and craigslist is still only intermittently working. I wonder why they're having such trouble?

It would have been nice if someone had linked to a reliable source, like SF Gate instead of a gossip rag's wet dream.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/ 07/24/BAG9NR67253.DTL/

According to sfgate.com: "The source of the power failure appears to be an explosion in a transformer vault under a manhole in a plaza at 560 Mission St. in San Francisco... Witnesses said they heard an explosion at about 1:50 p.m., then saw flames coming from the manhole."

There's a report here that "Flesh-eating zombies are prowling the streets"

Ironically though, kids aren't reading. Yes, they're reading Harry Potter, but various reports on the topic of reading in the generation who have grown up with it suggest that it isn't translating that into a general interest in books (One random article on the topic grabbed from a quick look at google). I'd be very interested to see what happens in 5 or 10 years, once the craze really goes away - will there be any lasting change, or will the whole "reading" malarky vanish into the night?

Is that all they can find to say about the OLPC. When was the last time you read a headline about schoolchildren viewing porn under MS Bisto? How about a story about an international news organization partnering up with US cable company's to deliver quality porn to cable and satellite subscribers. Here in Euroland we can always can rely on Murdochs Sky Adult channels.

Comcast cashing in on porn

AT&T porn channel challenged by religious investors

All we need now is OLPC contributes to a) terrorism, b) money laundering and c) contributes to third world poverty. Scratch the last one, its the GPL that does that, according to Jonathan Schwartz.

has cleared their trademark with Joan Miro's estate?

If not, queue intellectual property lawsuits in 5..4..3..

It's happened before.

I think the problem with soda is that it is consumed in larger quantities than it used to be. From the very first article I found googling...

Because high fructose corn syrup mixes easily, extends shelf-life and is as much as 20 percent cheaper than other sources of sugar, large-scale food manufacturers love it. It can help prevent freezer burn, so you'll find it on the labels of many frozen foods. It helps breads brown and keeps them soft, which is why hot dog buns and even English muffins hold unexpected amounts. ...

the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2002 published research that showed that teenagers' milk consumption between 1965 and 1996 decreased by 36 percent, while soda consumption increased by more than 200 percent. Bray argues that without calcium, which nutritionists agree can help the body regulate weight, kids got fatter. He says that he could find no other single combination of environmental or food changes that were as significant to the rise in obesity.

The original article didn't make a convincing case for why soda is worse with HFCS in it. The real problem seems to be that HFCS is used more than sugar used to be, and that we eat more sugared foods than we used to.

Well, this is where the importance of the issue has to be taken into perspective. So I'm not going to suggest that you boycott your grocery store over something like this. It's not like they're using slave labor or anything. This is one reason there is much doubt the issue could ever be resolved. It's about entertainment. However, it can still lead to general disrespect for all law as people do realize how the law is designed to protect commercial interests above human interests. It will increase the prominence of a separate "underground" society and possible open warfare between them and then both sides forgetting why it's happening even though the conflicts would continue on their own. Here we are seeing the ultimate result of prohibition. It becomes a golden goose for the top belligerents on both sides with skyrocketing profit margins. The problem can only get worse while the prohibitions remain in place. It can't go any other way. These are natural forces at work here. Nothing can change until we become human. Now, excuse me while I go spray a tree to mark my territory and remind the other cats and dogs to stay away.

A $3.8 billion expansion and they can't afford to clean up the mess that they're creating?

Cleaning completely is not possible. There may be one or three people on the entire Slashdot, who know, what can and can not be done with this waste... The rest are just venting.

The article's numbers are weird. They assert, the amount of "industrial sludge" will increase by 35% (non-toxic ammonia by even more), but the refinery's output — by only 15%.

It would seem, they are better of allowing another refinery — just like the existing one — it would double the pollution, but also double the output...

I think, the problem comes from the switch to heavy oil, which largely comes from friendly Canada is much harder to process (although companies like Ivanhoe are coming up with revolutionary methods).

We all want "energy independence", but the sales of big SUVs are only growing.

Financing unwholesome governments and terrorism abroad, or polluting your own lakes (or air, if you add ethanol to your fuel). Make your choice...

There is hope — if the Republican candidates agreed with each other on anything during their most recent TV-debate, it was that we need to build (much) more nuclear stations. That should ease the strain considerably...

Stories from Amazon tribes suggest that Megatherium may still be alive somewhere in the rain forest. . . http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2 007/07/08/MNG2IQSUCI1.DTL

Actually, @Home *built* all of the cable companies' network infrastructures and provided the broadband service for pretty much every major cable co except Time Warner. They had about 4.5M customers paying $40+ a month (which was about half of the total US broadband market at the time!) Can't lose, you'd think? Well, the catch is said cable co's also owned a significant stake in @Home, and once they decided they could make more money doing it themselves, they let it die...

Here's a decent post mortem (sounds surprisingly like "Who Killed the Electric Car?...):

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chroni cle/archive/2001/12/17/BU23049.DTL

And I think agreeing to pay $340M to the @Home bondholders is as good as AT&T admitting blame...

http://www.comcast.com/About/PressRelease/PressRel easeDetail.ashx?PRID=152

I was so excited to see AT&T all but disappear as a public company... until SBC goes and builds a new Deathstar three times the size of the original...

Yep. This garbage has been going on for years and years. Here's a story from the SF Chronicle about a bar that quit having live music all together after constant threats from ASCAP. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/ 12/03/BUGL13CH5H26.DTL

I bet these 2.3 million people don't want the law weakened.

Firstly, security is black and white. There is no gray.

That being said, why would anyone want to copy your card in the first place? There are so many easier ways of beating the system. It would be possible to get a merchant account using fraudulent information, obtain a card reader, spend a day on the subway or walking the streets of Manhattan and charge $25 to every card you could read durring the day. The ideal amount to charge is the maximum that doesn't require a paper trail. The next step would be to withdrawl the money, cancel your merchant account, and lay low. Honestly, it's as simple as walking next to someone and all you need is a card reader, PDA and internet access.

And if you've ever tried to dispute fraudulent charges, it's not a fun time.

"In a sheep, what you're doing is nuclear transfer -- sending in all the machinery ready to roll," he said. "Here, you just send in the blueprint." Well, Dr. Ellington, that is quite a bit of exhaggeration. "All the machinery ready to roll"? Like ribosomes, which are "bound to endoplasmic reticulum or freely floating in the cytoplasm"? Give me a break. I think every scientists that talks to media should be banned from government grants for ever (analog of disbarring)

In the study, the researchers removed intact DNA from Mycoplasma mycoides and inserted it into Mycoplasma capricolum. That is the same genus. If you compare 16S RNAs of those two species they have 1515 identical nucleotides (one of them has in total 1524, another - 1527 nucleotides). 16S ribosomal RNAs are a standard marker for comparison of species, since ribosomal RNAs are the most universal component of any independently living organsim (that is every single life form except viruses).

In other terms this is quite similar to getting DNA from one cell and transfering it to another cell (transformation). First happened in 1928. Venter has done it in a technologically more impressive way, but scientifically - no big deal.

About practical implications: is not it much more practical to transform existing bacteria to produce whatever is necessary by adding required features into the genome?

On June 21 they canceled the Misty spysat program. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/ 06/21/national/w132025D93.DTL
They've now got several billion in funding left over with which to pay the light bills.
My guy feeling is they don't want people to think about their sudden funding surplus, a target for GAO surplus budget retrieval, hence their story about being short on their operating budget.

(For non-US folks, GAO = General Accounting Office, chief bean counters and appointed budgetary watchdogs for the US government.)

As progressive and ahead of the curve as CA is in the environment, there are still some areas where the state totally caved to money interests.

And when it comes to the rights of individuals, CA can really suck. The voters gave the state the right to collect DNA information and enter it in a database upon your arrest, NOT CONVICTION. So your DNA goes on file even if you're wrongly accused. See any potential for abuse here?

Plus, don't forget the state is home to the MPAA, and the House co-sponsor of the Patriot act.

According to the Fed, total consumer credit debt, excluding mortgages, hit a record $2.4 trillion in September. Factoring in mortgages, outstanding household debt soars to about $12.3 trillion.

It also assumes that the factory did not print 16 million extra copies and that the "pirates" won't be able to duplicate the image. The widespread counterfieting of currency is evidence to the contrary.

And from a story the next day, a report of just that:

Later, when she returned to the bank that had been her original destination that morning and took possession of the lost driver's license, it was a perfect forgery -- with a hologram and a California seal -- and it had Lodrick's name but Nelson's photo and physical characteristics. "You can buy the technology (to add marks and holograms) on your computer from companies that have legitimate government contracts and then make a lot of money selling the technology to people they must know are not legitimate," Fairbairn said. "Millions and millions of dollars." The black market, he said, is "a growth industry."

It's amazing how deeply you trolls will modbomb usefull and accurate information. Keep bombing, that's what Bill Gates pays you for.

re: vegetarianism etc in the grand scheme of things there's only a miniscule genetic difference between humans and animals though : http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/ a/2004/05/08/GENES.TMP&type=science Humans are animals too afterall, and if plants make concessions for other plants with a similar genetic make-up... What i'm trying to say is that animals are very close to us in the food chain. Isn't the sensible thing to expand our gene pool, by consuming foods of the most fundamental type, and with the genes most diverse from ourselves, instead of constricting it?

At least they didn't call the spaceship a pilotless drone.

...mandatory sterilization...

Eugenics was very popular from the 19th century up through the 1940's when the Nazi's used it to justify "mandatory euthanasia" of "undesireables": "This person suffering from hereditary defects costs the community 60,000 Reichsmark during his lifetime. Fellow Germans, that is your money, too." The United States had a very active compulsory sterilization program during this time. In fact, some of Hitler's own ideas may have been inspired by the American eugenics movement...

How's that for a slippery slope?

Here's the San Francisco Chronicle report the morning of the accident: Link here

It's amazing to me how people easily accept abuse, and how abusive the U.S. government has become. There is only one reason to control information about roads: To aid corruption. What does New Jersey have to hide?

The freeway collapse in San Francisco showed very thin concrete and poor adhesion, in my opinion.

Maybe that's what New Jersey officials have to hide. Did someone take money to allow poor construction?

It's amazing to me how people easily accept abuse, and how abusive the U.S. government has become. There is only one reason to control information about roads: To aid corruption. What does New Jersey have to hide?

The freeway collapse in San Francisco showed very thin concrete and poor adhesion, in my opinion.

Maybe that's what New Jersey officials have to hide. Did someone take money to allow poor construction?

And also he lies about his credentials. From comments somewhere else on this same article, I wish I knew this before.

Stanford Says Cringely Never Completed Doctorate
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/1 998/11/11/DD94762.DTL

This might not be real-time, it remains still impressive: read this recent story on "How Online Maps Update Their Data After Major Road Closures", the summary:
"Several blogs discussed the re-routing of webmapping directions that happened after a freeway connector collapsed. It started with the Brain Off blog, Mapping Hacks and All Points Blog provide comments. The Map Room shares additional links (yes, I did copy TMR's entry title). From the article: "Some services reflected the altered landscape right away, some needed a few days, and some still don't show that anything has changed. Even some of the Web sites that show alternative routes around the melted MacArthur Maze don't give the same directions that Caltrans and the city of Oakland have asked people to take. [...] Satellite services like GPS provider Magellan don't update their maps, but customers who pay extra for traffic updates would see that the road is closed. Drivers can also tell their devices that they need an alternative route.""

how about the The New York Times, or do you not consider NYT a "non-Israeli" newspaper? The The San Francisco Gate picked up the same article.

What the hell was your point?

The motivation for corn-based ethanol is political. While Washington advocates "free markets", American politicians of all political persuasions advocate subsidizing the production of corn-based ethanol because American agribusiness nearly owns the government.

Generally speaking, subsidies cost taxpayers dearly but do not pose a hazard. Corn-based ethanol is an exception. It drives up the price of corn and could lead to severe malnutrition in Mexico and other poor countries which cannot afford higher prices for basic food items. Subsidies for corn-based ethanol could indirectly kill people (via starvation) in the 3rd world.

Do American politicians care? No. They care only about making American agribusiness happy.

But are they pilotless drones?

I'm a fan of Apple products and am about to buy one, but can't resist pointing out that whoever did this is engaged in very tiny-scale fraud compared to what Steve Jobs and the rest of upper management have already admitted doing.

They have admitted:

* Inventing on paper a fake Board of Directors Committee meeting that never took place (source)

* Using this fake meeting to backdate options at a total benefit to Jobs of $20 million (contrary to Jobs' false spin) (same source)

* Backdating a total of 6,400 stock options grants over five years, including two to Jobs (source)

Those facts are agreed by all parties. All that's being fought about now is WHICH senior executives and board members were at fault. Since obviously Jobs rules Apple so loosely that this kind of thing can go on under his nose (cough) and just HAPPENS to have also happened at Pixar.

The crazy part is that backdating itself is totally legally, and doesn't even affect how you accont for the options, as the New Yorker has pointed out in an excellent short essay. You just have to disclose what you did, and that, it seems, threatens the pride of a lot of Silicon Valley execs who like to pretend that stock options are a performance motivator (when in the case of backdated options they are not).

Anyway, so some guy breeched Apple security and sent out a fake email, and probably made some cash on the stock dip. He'll probably be hunted down and prosecuted and do some time, which is kind of sad, considering far more money has been fraudulently obtained by some of the top people at Apple (again, that is not in dispute) and top people at tech companies all over the Valley.

Not going to keep me from buying a Mac, but sad nevertheless.

I'm a fan of Apple products and am about to buy one, but can't resist pointing out that whoever did this is engaged in very tiny-scale fraud compared to what Steve Jobs and the rest of upper management have already admitted doing.

They have admitted:

* Inventing on paper a fake Board of Directors Committee meeting that never took place (source)

* Using this fake meeting to backdate options at a total benefit to Jobs of $20 million (contrary to Jobs' false spin) (same source)

* Backdating a total of 6,400 stock options grants over five years, including two to Jobs (source)

Those facts are agreed by all parties. All that's being fought about now is WHICH senior executives and board members were at fault. Since obviously Jobs rules Apple so loosely that this kind of thing can go on under his nose (cough) and just HAPPENS to have also happened at Pixar.

The crazy part is that backdating itself is totally legally, and doesn't even affect how you accont for the options, as the New Yorker has pointed out in an excellent short essay. You just have to disclose what you did, and that, it seems, threatens the pride of a lot of Silicon Valley execs who like to pretend that stock options are a performance motivator (when in the case of backdated options they are not).

Anyway, so some guy breeched Apple security and sent out a fake email, and probably made some cash on the stock dip. He'll probably be hunted down and prosecuted and do some time, which is kind of sad, considering far more money has been fraudulently obtained by some of the top people at Apple (again, that is not in dispute) and top people at tech companies all over the Valley.

Not going to keep me from buying a Mac, but sad nevertheless.

You can not fire a prosecutor to end an investigation. This is obstruction of justice and it could be what happened in California. Even pomoting a prosecutor http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/ a/2006/01/27/MNGCNGU1J01.DTL can look suspicious.

You'll notice that some Republicans are taking this issue seriously:

''It is hard to see how the Department of Justice can function and perform its important duties with Mr. Gonzales remaining where he is,'' said Specter, R-Pa. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Fired-Prosec utors.html.

Republicans may be empty headed stooges, but they know your talking points are incorrect.

Other people have answered, referencing blood doping, but nobody has pointed out quite how deadly this is. This article claims a dozen Dutch pro racers died of probable blood-doping-related heart issues in the late 1980's; through the pro racing grapevine people have claimed that the numbers were much higher than that.

She was denied the degree she was expecting to get and had worked toward -- I'm not sure why they would change her degree like that, unless the education degree includes the teaching certificate as well. Either way, it's a seemingly arbitrary change by the administration to the outcome of her education that will affect her in her chosen profession.

It's lunacy -- I heard the story a few days ago and figured there must be more to it, but having read more about it now, I don't think there is. Apparently if you have any semblance of an adult life outside school, you're unfit to teach (according to the Morals Police).

Reminds me of the Sprout Goodnight Show host and her firing -- she'd been in some short PSA spoofs about sex SEVEN YEARS before she worked at Sprout (which is a 24-hour PBS Kids network), but parents pressured PBS to fire her and they did so. I guess all that matters is that someone thinks something is bad -- that's now apparently enough to make it true. Here's the Sprout story, by the way. My kid didn't seem to care, but I'm sure others did.

Good thought. There's a few directions you can go with this.

What about an American Journalist being extradited to China for criticising the government there.

What about being extradicted to a non-secular country for saying something against their religion.

But we are talking IP. What about an Indian being extradited to Sweden for copying IKEA furniture. Even though there are no IKEA stores in India. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2 006/02/12/MNG41H6PEF1.DTL.

Someones crossed a line here, but then many lines have been crossed in this war of IP holders vs the people.

"We still haven't ruled out other factors, such as pesticides or inadequate food resources following a drought," she said. "There are lots of stresses that these bees are experiencing," and it may be a combination of factors that is responsible.

"Something has to be done,'' said Ira Longini, an Emory University professor whose computer model of a potential avian flu pandemic shows that an outbreak could be snuffed out within a month by rushing antiviral drugs to the place where it started. "When you think of the potential damage a pandemic flu could do, and how little drug we have, the situation is quite absurd.

Roche, the pharmaceutical giant, recently announced a European price of $20,424 for a year's supply of its anti-HIV drug Fuzeon. This will translate into an AWP (Average Wholesale Price) in the U.S. of close to $25,000. "Roche has priced Fuzeon at almost three times the price of the most expensive AIDS drug," said ACT UP/NY member Mark Milano. "This excessive price will force ADAP programs to cut other cut other life-saving drugs, restrict entry to their programs, or increase already long waiting lists. This will hasten the death of thousands of people with HIV in the U.S."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/1999/02/16/BU71327.DTL

Damn, wasted mod points now, but i gotta reply to this with the first hit off google for "scharffen berger hershey":
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2 005/07/26/BUGM6DTAOM1.DTL
The skinny: Hershey bought them in 2005.

In my lifetime, I've been a machine designer, dog groomer, IT pro and electronics engineer--in spite of not being allowed to take "boys'" classes in high school, and my mother being told "She's a girl, she'll never need math!"

The only 'career' that paid well enough to raise and homeschool five kids was dog groomer. Men do not take women seriously no matter how well-educated, expert, efficient and competent they are. I have never made enough ever be able to retire, in spite of being more productive than any man I've ever worked with. The only people that have *ever* matched my productivity were other women.

The reality is that if you're a 'traditional woman'--the odds are very high that you will die in poverty. If you are NOT a traditional woman--the odds are not quite as high that you will die in poverty, but they're still much higher than mens. The entire system is still structured that the only women who are not likely to die in poverty are professionals--doctors and lawyers--and golddiggers.

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/50528/

Men set the system up; they work very hard to perpetuate it. All this idiotic ranting about "women have it better than ever" simply ignores that fact that what women have now still sucks. Economically, the US ranks *below* Lithuania and and Estonia for women's economic success. Damned impressive, guys.

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/50528/

And what's really interesting is that men cut their own throats with these attitudes. Societies that have high levels of sexual equality are more successful economically, and males are healthier. It's women that determine children's health--and women that have the resources do a much better job than women that are oppressed. Boys grow up bigger, stronger and healthier in societies where their moms are successful. There is also much less crime and greater economic stability in countries where women are equal to men in numbers and power in government.

Dr. Barres had it right--if a woman wants to succeed, she has to change into a man.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2 006/07/13/BAGIDJU67A1.DTL