jamotto

That would be awesome.

*update* Climbing Asian Death Toll Passes 23,000

Link quote:Google has blocked a new type of Internet worm that was targeting the company's search engine in order to find vulnerable computers on the Internet. The automatic worm, dubbed Santy.A, focuses on servers running phpBB, an electronic bulletin board software package. The worm was considered dangerous because it required no action from users in order to infect computers. Santy represents a new kind of threat, according to security firm F-Secure, because its automatic function allows it to find vulnerable machines very quickly. The firm noted that Google's action in shutting down the Santy search should end the outbreak immediately and permanently. Although the Santy worm has been slain, it is likely that malicious hackers will begin targeting Google more aggressively in the future. "Google has become an integral part of the way people use the Web," F-Secure researcher Mikko Hypponen told NewsFactor. "I have a bad feeling that attacks using Google will become more prevalent." Threats have cropped up in the past related to Google, Hypponen noted, but they have been viruses that used the search engine to locate e-mail addresses. Santy has demonstrated that a worm can be launched from the technology as well, which is worthy of concern, according to F-Secure. If Google does become a prime target, the company might need to boost its security response time if it wants to gain respect in the security community. As of now, Google has garnered complaints for its lack of adequate security contact information, which leads to delays in communication. When F-Secure researchers discovered Santy, Hypponen got no response to e-mails sent to Google's general security address, which is the only way listed on the site to alert the company of security problems. He ended up going through the public relations department in order to weave his way through to the actual security team. "The Google security team is up to speed, and that's good," he said. "But they've geared their operation toward protecting Google. It's not enough for the company to just protect itself. It needs to protect users, too."

Link quote:By DILIP GANGULY, Associated Press Writer COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Legions of rescuers spread across Asia Monday after an earthquake of epic power struck deep beneath the Indian Ocean, unleashing 20-foot tidal waves that ravaged coasts across thousands of miles and killed more than 13,340 people and left millions homeless in the fourth-largest temblor in a century. The death toll along the southern coast of Asia ÔÇö and as far west as Somalia, on the African coast, where nine people were reported lost ÔÇö steadily increased as authorities sorted out a far-flung disaster caused by Sunday's 9.0-magnitude earthquake, strongest in 40 years. Signs of the carnage were everywhere: Dozens of bodies still clad in swimming trunks lined beaches in Thailand. Villagers in Indonesia picked through the debris of destroyed houses amid the smell of rotting corpses. Hundreds of prisoners escaped a coastal jail in Sri Lanka. More than one million people were driven from their homes in Indonesia alone, and rescuers there on Monday combed seaside villages for survivors. The Indian air force used helicopters to rush food and medicine to stricken seashore areas. Another million were driven from their homes in Sri Lanka where some 25,000 soldiers and 10 air force helicopters were deployed in relief and rescue efforts, authorities said. At Thailand's beach resorts, packed with Europeans fleeing the winter cold at the peak of the holiday season, families and friends had tearful reunions Monday after a day of fear that their loved ones had been swept away. Katri Seppanen, 27, of Helsinki, Finland, walked around barefoot, in her salt water-stained T-shirt and skirt, at the Patong Hospital waiting room where she spent the night with her mother and sister. She had a bandaged cut on her leg. "The water went back, back, back, so far away, and everyone wondered what it was ÔÇö a full moon or what? Then we saw the wave come, and we ran," said a tearful Seppanen, who was on the popular Patong beach with her family. The wave washed over their heads and separated them. Fifty-eight half-naked and swimming suit-clad corpses lay in rows outside the Patong Hospital emergency room. Three babies under the age of one were among the victims. A photo of one baby was posted on the wall of victims, the little corpse in a nearby refrigerator. The earthquake hit at 6:58 a.m.; the tsunami came as much as 2 1/2 hours later, without warning, on a morning of crystal blue skies. Sunbathers and snorkelers, cars and cottages, fishing boats and even a lighthouse were swept away. Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India each reported thousands dead. Deaths were also reported in Malaysia, Maldives and Bangladesh. "It's an extraordinary calamity of such colossal proportions that the damage has been unprecedented," said Chief Minister Jayaram Jayalalithaa of India's Tamil Nadu, a southern state which reported 1,705 dead, many of them strewn along beaches, virtual open-air mortuaries. "It all seems to have happened in the space of 20 minutes. A massive tidal wave of extreme ferocity ... smashed everything in sight to smithereens," she said. At least three Americans were among the dead ÔÇö two in Sri Lanka and one in Thailand, according to State Department spokesman Noel Clay. He said a number of other Americans were injured, but he had no details. "We're working on ways to help. The United States will be very responsive," Clay said. John Krueger, 34, of Winter Park, Colorado, described being inside his bungalow Sunday on Khao Luk Beach, north of Phuket, with his wife, Romina Canton, 26, of Rosario, Argentina, when the water filled it and blew it apart. "The water rushed under the bungalow, brought our floor up and raised us to the ceiling. The water blew out our doors, our windows and the back concrete wall. My wife was swept away with the wall, and I had to bust my way through the roof," Krueger said while waiting to talk to a U.S. Embassy official at Phuket City Hall. "It was like being in a washing machine." Canton was dragged into the ocean for more than an hour until a wave brought her back to land again, with a broken nose and foot scratches all over her body, Krueger said. The quake was centered 155 miles south-southeast of Banda Aceh, the capital of Indonesia's Aceh province on Sumatra, and six miles under the Indian Ocean's seabed. The temblor leveled dozens of buildings on Sumatra ÔÇö and was followed Sunday by at least a half-dozen powerful aftershocks, ranging in magnitude from almost 6 to 7.3, and one aftershock Monday that hit India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The waves that followed the first massive jolt were far more lethal. An Associated Press reporter in Aceh province saw bodies wedged in trees as the waters receded. More bodies littered the beaches. Authorities said at least 4,448 were dead in Indonesia; the full impact of the disaster was not known, as communications were cut to the towns most affected. The waves barreled across the Bay of Bengal, pummeling Sri Lanka, where more than 4,500 were reported killed ÔÇö at least 3,000 in areas controlled by the government and about 1,500 in regions controlled by rebels, who listed the death toll on their Web site. There was an unconfirmed report of 500 more deaths on another Web site that provided no details. Some 170 children were feared lost in an orphanage. More than a million people were displaced from wrecked villages. Devinda R. Subasinghe, the Sri Lanka ambassador to the United States, said the extensive damage will make the rescue effort more difficult. "It's going to take time to figure out access to these areas that have been impacted," Subasinghe said Monday in an interview on CNN. Up to 70 percent of the island's coastline was damaged, he said. There was sporadic, small-scale looting in the towns of Galle and Matara, and authorities said about 200 inmates escaped from a prison, taking advantage of the chaos after guards panicked and fled when water entered the building. About 2,300 were reported dead along the southern coasts of India. The private Aaj Tak television channel put the death toll there at up to 3,300, but the report could not be confirmed. At least 431 in Thailand, 48 in Malaysia and 32 in the Maldives, a string of coral islands off the southwestern coast of India. At least two died in Bangladesh ÔÇö children who drowned as a boat with about 15 tourists capsized in high waves. In India's Andhra Pradesh state, at least 32 Hindu devotees were drowned when they went into the sea for a religious ceremony to mark the full moon. Among them were 15 children. On Monday, bodies of women and children lay strewn on the sand. "I was shocked to see innumerable fishing boats flying on the shoulder of the waves, going back and forth into the sea, as if made of paper," said P. Ramanamurthy, 40, of that state. In Cuddalore, in the worst-hit Tamil Nadu state, survivors huddled Monday in a marriage hall turned makeshift shelter, as fire engine sirens whined outside. Broken boats law on the shore near smashed huts with only frail bamboo frames jutting out of the ground. The earthquake that caused the tsunami was the largest since a 9.2 temblor hit Prince William Sound in Alaska in 1964, according to geophysicist Julie Martinez of the U.S. Geological Survey (news - web sites). "All the planet is vibrating" from the quake, said Enzo Boschi, the head of Italy's National Geophysics Institute. Speaking on SKY TG24 TV, Boschi said the quake even disturbed the Earth's rotation. The quake occurred at a place where several huge geological plates push against each other with massive force. The survey said a 620-mile section along the boundary of the plates shifted, motion that triggered the sudden displacement of a huge volume of water. Scientists said the death toll might have been reduced if India and Sri Lanka had been part of an international warning system designed to advise coastal communities that a potentially killer wave was approaching. Although Thailand is part of the system, the west coast of its southern peninsula does not have the system's wave sensors mounted on ocean buoys. As it was, there was no warning. Gemunu Amarasinghe, an AP photographer in Sri Lanka, said he saw young boys rushing to catch fish that had been scattered on the beach by the first wave. "But soon afterward, the devastating second series of waves came," he said. He climbed onto the roof of his car, but "In a few minutes my jeep was under water. The roof collapsed. "I joined masses of people in escaping to high land. Some carried their dead and injured loved ones. Some of the dead were eventually placed at roadside, and covered with sarongs. Others walked past dazed, asking if anyone had seen their family members." Michael Dobbs, a reporter for The Washington Post, was swimming around a tiny island off a Sri Lankan beach at about 9:15 a.m. when his brother called out that something strange was happening with the sea. Then, within minutes, "the beach and the area behind it had become an inland sea, rushing over the road and pouring into the flimsy houses on the other side. The speed with which it all happened seemed like a scene from the Bible ÔÇö a natural phenomenon unlike anything I had experienced before," he wrote on the Post's Web site. Dobbs weathered the wave, but then found himself struggling to keep from being swept away when the floodwaters receded. The international airport was closed in the Maldives after a tidal wave that left 51 people missing in addition to the 32 dead. Indonesia, a country of 17,000 islands, is prone to seismic upheaval because of its location on the margins of tectonic plates that make up the so-called the "Ring of Fire" around the Pacific Ocean basin. The Indonesian quake struck just three days after an 8.1 quake along the ocean floor between Australia and Antarctica caused buildings to shake hundreds of miles away. The earlier temblor caused no serious damage or injury. Quakes reaching a magnitude 8 are very rare. A quake registering magnitude 8 rocked Japan's northern island of Hokkaido on Sept. 25, 2003, injuring nearly 600 people. An 8.4 magnitude tremor that struck off Peru on June 23, 2001, killed 74.

Link quote:By Daniel Sorid CHANDLER, Ariz. (Reuters) - From a wind-swept industrial site in the Sonoran Desert, Intel Corp., appears to be gearing up for battle. Construction crews hammer away at an unprecedented $2 billion upgrade to one of Intel's two Arizona factories, preparing the world's largest chip maker to safeguard its lead in manufacturing from resurgent rivals and to put recent costly missteps behind it. The stakes are high: If Intel can pull off its complex renovation of the 8-year-old Fab 12 plant, it could pioneer a much cheaper alternative to building chip fabrication facilities from scratch. For Intel's top manufacturing executive, Robert Baker, the challenge is also to show that a technology powerhouse with a manufacturing staff of 45,000 -- six times the entire payroll of rival AMD -- can be a nimble innovator. "Part of what I do is put the emphasis on how fast we respond," Baker, 49, said in a recent interview. Intel needs to move faster than ever in its 36-year history after a series of product blunders in 2004, including a recall of defective desktop computer chips. Meanwhile, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Intel's smaller rival that made its name by making bargain-basement Intel knockoffs, has been gaining in consumer niches like chips for PC gaming and computer servers. And with help from partner IBM, AMD has honed its manufacturing, especially in factory automation. "AMD is the perceived leader on the automation side, not Intel," said Risto Puhakka, vice president of industry forecaster VLSI Research. But AMD is not the only threat. South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has been spending billions on chip factory equipment and has impressed the engineering community with its manufacturing research. Texas Instruments Inc., which competes against Intel in cellular phone chips, is at work on a $3 billion advanced factory of its own. From his office in a nondescript building overlooking alfalfa fields and dairy farms, Baker, Intel's senior vice president in charge of manufacturing, turns out strategies to keep Intel's factories in the lead. Baker's group will lead the industry forward on three new technologies; the move to dual-core, or two-chips-in-one, microprocessors; the shrinking of chip feature sizes to 65-nanometers, small enough to be on the same scale as viruses; and the move to more productive 12-inch silicon wafers. His challenge is to make the new ideas work in the real world. A team in Oregon develops the technologies, but Baker's group puts them to work in factories. Inside the engineering community, Intel's ability to churn out hundreds of millions of chips a year is half the basis of its reputation. "Intel's biggest strength has been their manufacturing," said Charlie Glavin, an analyst with Needham & Co. In an environment where an errant speck of copper or a faulty circuit layout can ruin millions of dollars worth of goods, the stakes are high. "If Intel's able to do this, they will get higher (profit) margins," Glavin said. Part of Intel's gamble in Chandler is to try to convert an older plant to new technologies. Building new is easier -- but more expensive. The upgrade could save costs, but potential losses for a miscalculation are also high. If Baker gets it right in Arizona, factories around the world -- including Fab 22 next door -- could get similar treatment. Fab 12 (fab is industry shorthand for fabrication facility) was one of the world's most advanced production facilities when it was built eight years ago. But the drumbeat of Moore's Law, the maxim named for Intel's founder that predicts the constant shrinking of transistors, the building blocks of microchips, had made it nearly out of date. To upgrade the factory, the interior structure and layout of the entire facility must be changed, new tools installed, and the supporting infrastructure above and below the factory reworked. All new automation tools that shuttle pods of 12-inch wafers -- each worth up to $70,000 -- have to be installed. The missteps in 2004 taught Baker a few lessons, mostly about the processes for decision making, internal communication, and planning -- all of which were changed in the interest of getting Intel "to not act like a big company, but act like a small company," Baker said. But he is still committed to big changes, and he says that such a road always has rough spots. "When you try to do state-of-the-art stuff, you're going to run into things," he said.

quote:The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. 1st Lt. Christopher W. Barnett, 32, of Baton Rouge, La., died Dec. 23 in Baghdad, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his military vehicle. Barnett was assigned to the Army National Guard's 1st Battalion, 156th Armor Regiment, 256th Brigade Combat Team, Shreveport, La. The incident is under investigation.Link May you rest in peace...

quote:The Department of Defense announced today the death of thirteen soldiers supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. They died Dec. 21 in Mosul, Iraq, when their dining facility was attacked. Killed were: Capt. William W. Jacobsen Jr., 31, of Charlotte, N.C. Jacobsen was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division (Stryker Brigade Combat Team), Fort Lewis, Wash. Sgt. Maj. Robert D. O'Dell, 38, of Manassas, Va. O'Dell was assigned to the United States Army Intelligence & Security Command, Fort Belvoir, Va. Sgt. 1st Class Paul D. Karpowich, 30, of Bridgeport, Pa. Karpowich was assigned to the Army Reserve's 2nd Battalion, 390th Infantry Regiment, Webster, N.Y. Staff Sgt. Julian S. Melo, 47, of Brooklyn, N.Y. Melo was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 5th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division (Stryker Brigade Combat Team), Fort Lewis, Wash. Staff Sgt. Darren D. VanKomen, 33, of Bluefield, W.Va. VanKomen was assigned to the 2nd Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division (Stryker Brigade Combat Team), Fort Lewis, Wash. Staff Sgt. Robert S. Johnson, 23, of Castro Valley, Calif. Johnson was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division (Stryker Brigade Combat Team), Fort Lewis, Wash. Sgt. Lynn R. Poulin Sr., 47, of Freedom, Maine. Poulin was assigned to the Army National Guard's 133rd Engineer Battalion, Belfast, Maine. Spc. Jonathan Castro, 21, of Corona, Calif. Castro was assigned to the 73rd Engineer Company, 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division (Stryker Brigade Combat Team), Fort Lewis, Wash. Spc. Thomas J. Dostie, 20, of Sommerville, Maine. Dostie was assigned to the Army National Guard's 133rd Engineer Battalion, Portland, Maine. Spc. Cory M. Hewitt, 26, of Stewart, Tenn. Hewitt was assigned to the 705th Ordnance Company, Fort Polk, La. Spc. Nicholas C. Mason, 20, of King George, Va. Mason was assigned to the Army National Guard's 276th Engineer Battalion, West Point, Va. Spc. David A. Ruhren, 20, of Stafford, Va. Ruhren was assigned to the Army National Guard's 276th Engineer Battalion, West Point, Va. Pfc. Lionel Ayro, 22, of Jeanerette, La. Ayro was assigned to the 73rd Engineer Company, 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division (Stryker Brigade Combat Team), Fort Lewis, Wash.Link May you rest in peace...

Oh joy

Merry Christmas, happy holidays and a happy new year too.

quote:now for another question: What is the difference between a Video Card, Graphics Adapter, and Video Adapter?They are the same thing.

Link quote:By TED BRIDIS, AP Technology Writer WASHINGTON - Albert Kolk's small plane banked uncontrollably in darkness over the Monashee mountains, then began spiraling. "Seat belts!" he barked to his teenage grandson and two young friends. Then he reached for a red lever in the cockpit. Suddenly, an orange-and-white parachute as big as a house opened above the plane and gently landed his stricken aircraft in a rocky clearing. If the maker of the parachute that saved Kolk's life this past spring succeeds, one day commercial aircraft like regional commuter jets may have similar safety systems. First, though, there's the challenge of creating a parachute robust enough to rescue bigger, faster planes. "Weight and speed are always the challenge," acknowledged Robert Nelson, chairman of Ballistic Recovery Systems Inc., which sold about 500 of its $16,000 parachute systems this year for use by small private planes and pilots like Kolk. The company's most advanced parachute right now can accommodate nearly 4,000 pounds. While small planes can weigh up to 2,000 pounds and cruise about 175 miles per hour, regional jets weigh 80,000 pounds and fly at more than 600 miles per hour. That's why Ballistic Recovery Systems is working with NASA which gave it $670,000 for research to design a new generation of emergency parachutes that would work on small jets and could be steered by pilots as they drift to the ground. Kolk, a rancher who was piloting his private plane April 8 from Seattle to his ranch in British Columbia, remembered reaching for the parachute handle as his plane slipped into a dangerous flat spin over the mountains in British Columbia, "like how a dog chases its tail." A seasoned pilot, Kolk said he had never experienced such a disaster in over a decade of private flying. "I knew I was in trouble. I couldn't straighten out," Kolk said. "When that chute opened, it was a peaceful, wonderful feeling." Kolk's experience is one of four cases where parachute-equipped planes landed safely beneath a canopy since U.S. regulators approved the system six years ago. Ballistic Recovery Systems, based in St. Paul, Minn., says eight lives were saved in those four incidents, plus dozens of other people in accidents involving smaller parachute-equipped ultralight planes that resemble motorized gliders. The parachute, stored behind the rear seats in small planes, is fired with a rocket through the rear windshield; it's attached with high-strength lines to the plane's wings, nose and tail. They are increasingly popular among private pilots, and for good reason: The government said 626 people died in general aviation crashes in 2003, compared with 81 people aboard commercial airlines. Aviation experts question whether parachutes will ever be attached to the largest passenger jets, such as the Boeing 747, which weighs more than 900,000 pounds. "The speed and weight of those planes would seem to preclude a system like that," said James Hall, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. Most of the estimated 500 parachute systems Ballistic Recovery Systems sold in 2004 went to aircraft manufacturer Cirrus Design Corp. of Duluth, Minn., which includes them as standard equipment on its line of small private planes. U.S. regulations allow owners of some Cessna small planes to install parachutes, but only about a dozen have bought the add-on equipment so far. Brent Brown, a lawyer in Roanoke, Va., was having one added to his plane. Brown, who often flies twice a week over the mountains in western Virginia, said he couldn't imagine choosing to save money by not adding the new safety equipment. "I would feel awful silly on that terrible, terrible ride down," Brown said. The emergency parachutes aren't flawless. Two families in Syracuse, N.Y., are suing Cirrus, Ballistic Recovery Systems and others for a combined $67.5 million over a fatal crash in April 2002. The case is pending in federal court. The families said the pilot, a plastic surgeon who bought the plane six days earlier, tried to open the parachute but it failed. Defense lawyers have denied the system malfunctioned, and federal investigators concluded the parachute never opened "for undetermined reasons." In another accident, one month before the Syracuse crash, pilot Paul Heflin of Lexington, Ky., repeatedly pulled hard on the parachute handle when his plane began a steep, uncontrolled dive from 3,000 feet. "He was pulling for his life," recalled Heflin's passenger, Benjamin Ditty. Both suffered minor injuries but walked away from the wreckage. The parachute popped open just after the plane crashed, "which was not too convenient for us," Ditty said. Months after Heflin's crash, Cirrus ordered all its customers to immediately replace a vital cable in the parachute system. Heflin said he still has faith in the parachute, but Ditty ÔÇö who also flies ÔÇö said he would never rely on one again. "It was supposed to work," he said. Some pilots insist they'll never fly without a parachute. "People are crazy not to fly with them," said William Graham of San Diego, an instructor pilot whose plane landed beneath a parachute this spring near Stockton, Calif., after it unexpectedly flipped upside down at 16,000 feet. Graham, who was flying with his wife, Barbara, said they drifted onto a farm field so gently the landing didn't break fragile Christmas ornaments and glass bottles aboard the plane.

Link quote:LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A California firm that earlier this year launched the world's first cat cloning service has announced its first sale: a cloned, male kitten named "Little Nicky." Genetic Savings & Clone -- based in Sausalito, California, and financed by billionaire John Sperling -- announced that it had sold the kitten to a Texas woman for $50,000. The cloned kitten is a genetic twin of "Nicky," a 17-year-old Maine Coone cat that had been kept as a pet by the woman until it died in September. The client, identified only as "Julie," asked that the company not fully identify her since she feared being targeted by groups opposed to cloning. "According to our client, Julie, 'Little Nicky,' the clone, is identical to 'Nicky,' her former cat," Ben Carlson, Vice-President of Genetic Savings & Clone, told NBC. The Humane Society and other animal advocates have criticized pet cloning as potentially dangerous to the animals involved and wasteful, given the millions of dogs and cats that are destroyed each year in U.S. animal shelters. Sperling, an Arizona entrepreneur who launched the for-profit University of Phoenix, underwrote the cloning of the first cat, CC, for Carbon Copy, who was born in 2001. Genetic Savings & Clone runs a "PetBank" service allowing pet owners to send in a tissue sample for later cloning. The company says it expects to offer dog cloning in 2005. Sperling founded the company as part of a bid to clone his dog, Missy. Dolly, a sheep cloned by Scottish researchers in 1996, was the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell.

Link quote: WHITE ROSES I hurried into the local department store to grab some last minute Christmas gifts. I looked at all the people and grumbled to myself. I would be in here forever and I just had so much to do. Christmas was beginning to become such a drag. I kinda wished that I could just sleep through Christmas. But I hurried the best I could through all the people to the toy department. Once again I mumbled to myself at the prices of all these toys, and wondered if the grandkids would even play with them. I found myself in the doll aisle. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a little boy about 5 holding a lovely doll. He kept touching her hair and he held her so gently. I could not seem to help myself. I just kept looking over at the little boy and wondered whom the doll was for. I watched him turn to a woman and he called his aunt by name and said, "Are you sure I don't have enough money." She replied a bit impatiently, "You know that you don't have enough money for it." The aunt told the little boy not to go anywhere that she had to go get some other things and would be back in a few minutes. And then she left the aisle. The boy continued to hold the doll. After a bit I asked the boy whom the doll was for. He said, "It is the doll my sister wanted so badly for Christmas. She just knew that Santa would bring it." I told him that maybe Santa was going to bring it. He said, "No, Santa can't go where my sister is...I have to give the doll to my Mamma to take to her." I asked him where his sister was. He looked at me with the saddest eyes and said, "She has gone to Heaven." My Daddy says that Mama is going to have to go be with her. My heart nearly stopped beating. Then the boy looked at me again and said, I told my Daddy to tell Mama not to go. I told him to tell her to wait till I got back from the store. "Then he asked me if I wanted to see his picture. I told him I would love to. He pulled out some pictures he'd had taken at the front of the store. He said "I want my Mamma to take this with her so she don't ever forget me." "I love my Mama so very much and I wish she did not have to leave me." "But Daddy says she will need to be with my sister." I saw that the little boy had lowered his head and had grown so very quiet. While he was not looking I reached into my purse and pulled out a handful of bills. I asked the little boy, "Shall we count that money one more time? He grew excited and said, "Yes, I just know it has to be enough." So I slipped my money in with his and we began to count it. Of course it was plenty for the doll. He softly said, "Thank you God for giving me enough money." Then the boy said "I just asked God to give me enough money to buy this doll so Mama can take it with her to give to my sister." "And God heard my prayer. "I wanted to ask God for enough to buy my Mama a white rose, but I didn't, but God gave me enough to buy the doll and a rose for my Mama." "She loves white roses so very, very much. "In a few minutes the aunt came back and I wheeled my cart away. I could not keep from thinking about the little boy as I finished my shopping in a totally different spirit than when I had started. And I kept remembering a story I had seen in the newspaper several days earlier about a drunk driver hitting a car and killing a little girl and the Mother was in serious condition. The family was deciding on whether to remove the life support. Now surely this little boy did not belong with that story. Two days later I read in the paper where the family had disconnected the life support and the young woman had died. I could not forget the little boy and just kept wondering if the two were somehow connected. Later that day, I could not help myself and I went out and bought some white roses and took them to the funeral home where the young woman was. And there she was holding a lovely white rose, the beautiful doll, and the picture of the little boy in the store. I left there in tears, my life changed forever. The love that little boy had for his little sister and his mother was overwhelming. And in a split second a drunk driver had ripped the life of that little boy to pieces. "Some people are still angels, they lift us to our feet when our wings have failed us."

quote:Gee Jamaotto even if Rumsfeld did sign the letters it would still be getting done by a cold heartless machine, what the diff?Night and day, to put one's sig on the letter is harder than just stuffing a bunch of paper's into the "Sign a bunch of papers real fast" machine. In all honesty, I think the President should have to sign them.

quote:The Department of Defense announced today the death of two soldiers supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. They died Dec. 19 in Shuaybah, Kuwait, when a vehicle struck them. Both soldiers were assigned to the 180th Transportation Battalion, 13th Corps Support Command, Fort Hood, Texas. Killed were: Staff Sgt. Donald B. Farmer, 33, of Zion, Ill. Sgt. Berry K. Meza, 23, of League City, TexasLink May you rest in peace...

quote:Lance Cpl. Neil D. Petsche, 21, of Lena, Ill., died Dec. 21 due to injuries received in a non-hostile vehicle incident in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. Petsche was assigned to 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, Calif.Link May you rest in peace...

Link quote:By MATT SLAGLE, AP Technology Writer FORT SILL, Okla. - It's a sweltering 90 degrees and soldiers Kevin Messmer and Kroften Owen are hunched in a rubble-strewn apartment. Peering from a window to avoid sniper fire, they see a bustling Iraqi city. Binoculars pressed to his face, Messmer surveys the view and finds what he's looking for just across the river, an insurgent stronghold near a mosque's towering minarets. He whispers coordinates to Owen, who in turns calls them into a radio. A crackling streak of artillery fire arrives seconds later, shaking the room as the bomb annihilates the target in a thunderous cloud of thick, black smoke. The mission is a success. Except the mission doesn't really exist. 2nd Lts. Messmer, 24, and Owen, 23, of the 3rd Battalion, 30th Field Artillery Regiment, are among the first troops to use a new breed of military simulator that's part video game/part Hollywood sound stage with a serious dose of theme park thrill. The apartment setting is all about creating the illusion of urban warfare ÔÇö in a way that stimulates the senses. Littered with chunks of brown plaster and other debris, the room is decorated in a decidedly Middle-Eastern manner. A picture hangs sideways on one wall, the smashed remnants of a small vase lie on a small circular table near the kitchen area. Like a Broadway show, walls and other set pieces can be swapped out as the training merits. Hidden speakers envelop the set, located in a shopping center-sized building, with sound effects both subtle (barking dogs) and earsplitting (bombs). And the window? It's really an oversized display screen showing an artificial cityscape with high-resolution computer graphics. The so-called "Urban Terrain Module" where Messmer, of Wabash, Ind., and Owen, of Philadelphia, had their multimedia immersion training is a one-of-a-kind facility, part of the Army's Joint Fires and Effects Trainer System, or JFETS. Across a darkened hallway is the Outdoor Terrain Module. It's a room with a sandy floor on which a parked Humvee faces an oversized movie screen. Soldiers see a computerized desert landscape. In this environment, too, the training is in how to precisely call in artillery strikes. Since the center went live in September, more than 300 officers have trained at the compound, whose evolution is key to a larger Defense Department strategy to give future members of all military branches the ability to better synchronize artillery, air support and other weaponry on the battlefield. The multimillion dollar system's origins go back to 1999, when the Army first partnered with a unique consortium of educators, video game makers and entertainment companies called the Institute for Creative Technologies. The goal: combine the expertise of these seemingly disparate fields to create synthetic environments that mimic actual wartime situations. "It's really all about cognitive training, decision-making under stress," says Randy Hill, ICT's director of applied research. The Army saves money on live-fire training, and also economizes by tapping outside expertise instead of developing everything internally. Traditional outdoor exercises are still part of the training, but they often don't convey the chaotic, complex nature of battles as well, said Col. Gary S. Kinne, JFETS director at Fort Sill. Back at the urban-training stage, Rick Bleau directs the action from a control room hidden behind a sliding door. Sitting at his office chair behind a bank of flat-screen computer monitors, Bleau can tweak environmental factors, such as level of sunlight, wind speed and temperature (between 50 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit). He can track soldiers' movements (their helmets have built-in motion sensing cameras) and invoke more malevolent commands, too. Anyone who keeps their head in the window for too long can expect to hear the whiz-pop of a sniper's incoming bullet. "We've had a lot of soldiers coming back from Iraq who say it's too real. The only thing we don't have is the smell," says Bleau, a civilian government subcontractor whose company manages the computer systems. "We're working on that." They'll certainly have the resources. Last month, the Army extended its contract with the ICT in a five-year deal worth $100 million. The ICT, located at the University of Southern California in Marina Del Ray, Calif., has collaborated with the Army on other projects. The most well-known is the squad-based training program, "Full Spectrum Warrior." A commercial version of the program, based on training from the infantry school at Fort Benning, Ga., was released to critical acclaim as a video game for the Xbox console this summer. In the past, the Army has used computer games for recruiting, too. The taxpayer-funded first-person shooter "America's Army," for example, teaches Army dogma while offering online battle modes where groups of gamers can shoot each other for free. And at Fort Lewis, Wash., soldiers use an online computer game to learn how to react to the ambush of a convoy. The bulk of today's soldiers have been exposed to video games their whole lives, so few have trouble adjusting to the Fort Sill multimedia immersion. "Anybody's who's played games, they have learned how to learn," said James Korris, ICT's creative director. "They come to this with a body of knowledge that the Army can take advantage of to make their training more effective and more efficient." Many U.S. soldiers in Iraq already play shoot 'em ups like "Halo" and "Battlefield: 1942" when they're off duty, so it makes sense to use video games as training aids, said Lt. Col. Tony Schmitz, a Fort Lewis instructor. Back at Fort Sill, Maj. Jim Singer says the artillery training he took in 1993 was downright primitive by today's standards, consisting largely of slide shows on a projector. "It's as close to the real thing as we can make it," he said. "In 10 years we've come this far. I can't imagine what it'll be like in another 10."

the last few posts in this thread have links to software to work well with UC. Link

quote:Originally posted by Ben Zwycky: 1. IÔÇÖm assuming you want high contrast, low brightness and low refresh time to reduce eye strain. Some pricier ones from Samsung and Acer caught my eye:The only problem with the stat's on the box is they are not generally comparable between different brands. If you can, I would suggest you go to the nearest computer store and check out the models first hand. Last time I looked at LCD's Samsung was a good brand as well as Viewsonic, Eizo, Dell, Phillips and LG Electronics. The 12ms response time is good and should prevent ghosting on the screen when something moves quickly across the screen. quote: 2. Memory. Does Core Latency affect performance significantly? Would it be better to have 2 512 MB DIMMÔÇÖs at CL 2.5 or 3 512MB DIMMÔÇÖs at CL 3 (A little more expensive, but not that much)?the CL 2.5 will get you at most a 6% increase in speed. I would pick latter option, can never have too much memory. quote: 3. Would having 2 120GB drives be noticably slower than 3 80GB drives? with 3 80 GB drives thereÔÇÖs more flexibility in arranging them, you can have all three RAID 0ÔÇÖd together for stunning speed, or just two of them with the third a separate drive to give you more space, keeping the more demanding programs on the faster driveIf you are going to put them in a RAID config. there should really be no difference in performance.

Perhaps, these people are upset, b/c their son or daughter was killed, and the condolence letters that should come from the people responsible for sending them to Iraq and elsewhere are instead signed by a cold and heartless and Impersonal machine.

Scratch that Marvin, the '65 film staring James Stewart was the original. Found this interesting article on the plane crash THE CRASH OF THE "PHOENIX"

quote:Marine Lance Cpl. Franklin A. Sweger, 24, San Antonio; killed Thursday in Iraq's Anbar province; assigned to 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force, Marine Corps Base, Hawaii.Link family photo via the San Antonio Express-News May you rest in peace...

This is the restored print and letterboxed version of the movie. The one you may have seen at Best Buy Link

It is. In fact, the one you saw at Best Buy was likely also a remake. This movie is like a second generation remake

heh, the hotter the better is the way I go.