29. September 2004 - Heads down ...
... today, huge Asteroid Flyby
27. May 2004 - Wind of change ... "The New York Times and Iraq"
May 26, 2004 - FROM THE EDITORS - Over the last year this newspaper has shone the
bright light of hindsight on decisions that led the United States into Iraq. We have
examined the failings of American and allied intelligence, especially on the issue of
Iraq's weapons and possible Iraqi connections to international terrorists. We have
studied the allegations of official gullibility and hype. It is past time we turned
the same light on ourselves ...
21. May 2004 - Monsanto wins Supreme Court battle ... "why" ...
With some obstacles to feed the starving of the world. The Supreme Court of
Canada ruled against
Percy Schmeiser a Saskatchewan farmer this Friday, saying since U.S. biotechnology
giant Monsanto holds a patent on a gene in its canola seed, it can control the use
of the plant. In a 5-4 decision, the court upheld Monsanto's patent over its Roundup
Ready canola plant gene, ruling Percy Schmeiser infringed on the company's patent by
growing the plant without a licence. "This is a sad day for farmers worldwide,"
said Pat Venditti, genetic engineering campaigner for Greenpeace Canada. "Monsanto’s
canola has been contaminating the fields of Western Canada for years now, as there is
no way to contain their transgenic pollution. Unfortunately the Court has held that
Monsanto can keep polluting farmers’ fields and keep menacing them with costly
lawsuits. Farmers should be able to keep their fields GE-free, but the Court has held
that’s a decision best left to Monsanto."
18. May 2004 - GIF patent expires ...
Today, in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and America, the Unisys patents covering the Lempel
Ziv Welch (LZW) compression algorithm used in the creation of GIF images, on TIFF-LZW,
PDF, Postscript-2, and V.42bis compression (used on dial-up modems) ends. Japan will
have to wait two more days, as the Japanese counterpart patents expire on May the
20th. Don't forget, we all, the the whole Internet, have been in breach of Unisys'
licence while their patents were active.
17. May 2004 - "Us" and "They" Donald Rumsfeld to the Heritage Foundation ...
They have the advantage of using our technology, e-mails and computers and pagers and
wire transfers and all kinds of technologies that they never could develop themselves,
and use them against us. They have the ability of going to school on us, watching how
free societies behave. Practically everything we do is public. And they see that. They,
they test it. They watch behavior and then adjust their techniques to accommodate to
that behavior. So it's a tough job. It's going to be a while. It's going to take a
while. And its going to take determination. Its going to take determination by this
generation and, very likely, the next generation.
16. May 2004 - And, should we be surprised ...
The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a
few Army reservists, says Seymour M. Hersh in a "The New Yorker" article, but in a
decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a
highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the
interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American
intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt
America’s prospects in the war on terror (Click here to read this article).
14. May 2004 - Allowing people to copy DVDs for their own use
These anarchistic view does not come from the hacker community. The idea comes from the
US House Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittee on commerce, trade and consumer
protection which wants a liberalisation of the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act".
16 members, from both parties, are sponsoring a bill to loosen DMCA restrictions and
said that the rights of individuals had been massively eroded. The committee feels
that individuals have long-standing rights to "fair use," which allows protected
works to be shared for personal, non-commercial use.
13. May 2004 - EU threatens the future of Linux and Open Source
Mandrakesoft claims the Irish EU presidency inserts extra clauses into software patent
law and threatens the future of Linux and Open Source. It claimed that the Irish president of
the EU had "surreptitiously reinstated" unlimited software patent rules to be adopted
by Monday next, without further debate. Mandrakesoft also claims that Microsoft is a
sponsor of the Irish presidency and claims the software giant may use its large patent
portfolio against Linux and Open Source.
10. May 2004 - Here's another chance ... COMET NEAT
Comet NEAT (C/2001 Q4)looks like a faint fuzzball with a stubby tail and is easily
seen through binoculars, and visible to the unaided eye, too, from dark-sky sites.
Tonight you can find it after sunset in the southwestern sky; look above and to the
left of the bright star Procyon. Comet NEAT (C/2001 Q4) is receding from Earth after
its 30 million mile close approach on May 7th.
08. May 2004 - Don't Read This!
Pentagon warns military personnel to stay away from Fox News. I recommend It schould
do that more often. The Department of Defense issued a memo intended to forbid Pentagon
staff to read a copy of the Taguba report, detailing abuse of detainees at prisons in
Iraq, that had been posted at the Fox News web site.
07. May 2004 - Probably the most hated person in "The States" now.
Oh boy, they must hate him ... Joseph Darby, 24, the army specialist responsible for
bringing the abuse of Iraqi prisoners to light.
An article in New Yorker magazine this week identified Darby as the soldier
who sounded the alarm over the treatment of Iraqi detainees in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib
prison. According to the transcript (obtained by the magazine) of a military hearing
in April, an army Criminal Investigation agent, Scott Bobeck, said a fellow soldier
had given Darby a compact disc with images of naked detainees being mistreated.
Outraged by what he saw, Darby "initially put a letter under our door, "said Bobeck".
Then he later came forward and made a sworn statement. He felt very bad about it and
thought it was wrong."
05. May 2004 - Sasser cure is worse than the illness ...
VIRUS WRITERS hoping to capitalise on the spread of the Sasser worm have hit on the
cunning plan of disguising a less effective Trojan as its cure. Emails offering a
cure to the Sasser worm has been circulated around the net. When people click on
the link to download the fix they actually download the older Netsky-AC virus.
It is believed that the two viruses were written by the same person. Both viruses
contain text that make references to "Skynet". Skynet was the computer system that
declared war between humans in the science fiction trille "Terminator".
01.May 2004 - Today ten new member states join the EU
Today ten new members enlardge the European Union to 25 states, making it the third
largest population bloc in the world after China and India, with more than 450 million
inhabitants, stretching from the Atlantic to the Baltic and from the Arctic Ocean to
the Mediterranean. The European Union now has a surface area of 3,691,214 square
kilometres (1,425,000 square miles) and covers 25 countries, with a Population of
455 million (January 2004). Germany is the most populous nation with 82.5 million
inhabitants, Malta the smallest with a mere 387,000.
April/May 2004 - The Double Comet Show of 2004
Watch out for "The Double Comet Show of 2004" ...
Comets C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) and C/2002 T7 (LINEAR) were discovered in August 2001 and
October 2002, respectively, by the automated sky-survey programs for which they’re
named: Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) and Lincoln Laboratory Near Earth Asteroid
Research (LINEAR). Amateurs have been tracking the comets for more than a year as
they’ve been approaching the inner solar system and gradually brightening.
29. April 2004 - An insidious, unworthy, diabolic and appalling attempt ...
... to raise doubt, where there is no doubt ... it is purely a cynical, poltical
exercise ... Charlie McCreevy (T.D. and Minister for Finance) 17. Feb.
2004 statement to critics on Electronic Voting ...
25. April 2004 - You are free, as long as you don't talk
In "The Day After Tomorrow," a $125 million disaster film set to open on May 28,
global warming from accumulating smokestack and tailpipe gases disrupts warm ocean
currents and sets off an instant ice age.Few climate experts think such a prospect
is likely, especially in the near future. But the prospect that moviegoers will be
alarmed enough to blame the Bush administration for inattention to climate change
has stirred alarm at the space agency, scientists there say. "No one from NASA is
to do interviews or otherwise comment on anything having to do with" the film, said
the April 1 message, which was sent by Goddard's top press officer. "Any news media
wanting to discuss science fiction vs. science fact about climate change will need
to seek comment from individuals or organizations not associated with NASA. "Copies
of the message, and the one from NASA headquarters to which it referred, were
provided to The New York Times by a senior NASA scientist who said he resented
attempts to muzzle climate researchers.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
22. April 2004 - Of mice and women, but no "men" ...
Some insects and reptiles can reproduce via parthenogenesis: the unfertilized egg retains
two sets of chromosomes and begins to develop as if it had been fertilized. No need for a
male. In mammals, though, successful parthenogenesis has been regarded as virtually
impossible. In mice, for instance, an electric or chemical stimulus can induce
parthenogenesis, but the resulting embryos die by day 10 of gestation. So this week's
report of the birth of parthenogenetic mice that can develop to adulthood is, to say the
least, startling. The first parthenogenetic pup, 'Kaguya', grew to be a healthy adult
female able to reproduce normally. The key to this feat is a gene knockout, affecting
the H19 gene in the oocyte donor, that appears to short-circuit the requirement for
paternal imprinting.
© 2004 Nature Publishing Group
20. April 2004 - William Bradfield Found another Bright Comet
On April 17th, Comet Bradfield (C/2004 F4) was only 0.17 AU from the Sun, well inside
the orbit of Mercury. Intense solar heat caused the comet to vaporize furiously,
forming a spectacular tail of dust and gas. This 3-day coronagraph movie of the flyby
(right) comes from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory.
14. April 2004 - Six New Security Flaws in Microsoft Windows®
eEye® Digital Security, a leading developer of network security software solutions,
today announced the discovery of six new vulnerabilities related to Microsoft (NASDAQ:
MSFT) Windows®. The critical discoveries include dangerous flaws in Windows Remote
Procedure Call (RPC), Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS), and in the
rendering of Windows Metafile (WMF) and Enhanced Metafile (EMF) image formats. These
critical security flaws affect unpatched Windows NT, 2000, XP and Windows Server 2003
machines. eEye’s research team discovered two of the most critical vulnerabilities as
early as September 2003. The patch for these vulnerabilities released today comes more
than 200 days after eEye’s discovery
Copyright 2004 eEye’s Retina®
06. April 2004 - "W" plays baseball as Baghdad burns ...
SAVAGE fighting raged across Iraq yesterday as eight American soldiers and at least 30
Iraqis were killed. Attacks on the US-led coalition reached a level of violence not seen
since the end of the war to overthrow Saddam Hussein. US marines are fighting their way
into the town of Fallujah on the River Euphrates, 30 miles west of Baghdad, where four
Americans were killed and mutilated a week ago. Five marines were reported killed in the
operation, but Iraqi casualties are unknown because ambulances are not being allowed to
enter the town. A further three US soldiers were killed in Baghdad.
Irish Independent
05. April 2004 - Cellphones may boost forces on biological tissue
Mobile phone radiation may cause a massive increase in the forces that living cells
exert on each other, suggests a new study from Sweden. Bo Sernelius, a physicist at
Linkoping University in Sweden, has a new lead. The research could be important in
answering the question of whether the radiation from mobile phones cause cancer or
other health problems. Many researchers fear the answer is yes, yet they have been
unable to come up with any plausible way that radiation from a phone could affect,
let alone harm, biological tissue.
01. April 2004 - After all, it is April Fool's Day ...
GOOGLE has announced that it will launch a free, Web-based e-mail service to compete
against Yahoo! and Microsoft. The service is dubbed "Gmail," will include a built-in
search function to scan old emails for information and it will provide more than a
gigabyte of free storage (that is 100 times what some rivals offer and sufficient to
hold about 500,000 e-mails).
29. March 2004 - You better believe it ...
29th March 2004 is a very significant date for all Irish citizens, because from today on,
most enclosed places of work in Ireland are smoke-free. This is a positive, progressive
health and safety measure, which brings both immediate and long-term positive benefits
to workers and the general public alike. I am pleased that Ireland has been able to
introduce this important legislation, which has the overwhelming support of the majority
of people, smokers and non-smokers alike.
Micheál Martin TD, Minister for Health and Children
18. March 2004 - WOW ... ASTEROID FLYBY ...
Newly-discovered asteroid [2004 FH] is flying past our planet right now only 43,000 km
from Earth's surface. There's no danger of a collision, but it is very, very close
(for comparison, geosynchronous satellites orbit Earth at an altitude of 35,800 km,
only six or seven thousand km below the asteroid). [2004 FH]'s point of closest
approach with the Earth is over the South Atlantic Ocean at 2200 UT.
[2004 FH] measures ~30 meters across, or about the size of a house. Although it's small,
[2004 FH] is visible through backyard telescopes, glowing like a 10th to 12th magnitude
star as it passes by Earth.
16. March - Oh Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ...
I am 52 years old today ... and please, don't tell anyone ...
14. March 2004 - Insanity has a name: "George W Bush" ...
George W.Bush is coming to Ireland. His security staff want immunity if they happen to
kill anyone.
06. March 2004 - Remarkable remarks by Barbra Streisand ...
Remarks by Barbra Streisand upon her receipt of The Human Rights Campaign Humanitarian
Award, today at March 6, 2004 ...
04. March - Insanity has another name: "United States Patent"
NETWORK ASSOCIATES is proud "owner" of a new patent they've been granted by the US Patent
and Trademarks Office (USPTO). The patent is granted for such innovative procedures as:
03. March 2004 - Bagle/MyDoom versus Netsky ...
As if the whole thing (Virus writing) isn't bad enough, the virus writer boneheads out there
have just started a war on each other ... with the annoying outcome of even more Viruses
spreading into the wild and on our computers (watch the "Latest Virus treats" here) ...
It appears that "Netsky" has started the "war" by insults the author of Bagle, by integrating
the following hidden message into the Netsky.F virus code: "Bagle – you are a looser!!!".
This was done because Netsky writers noticed a portion of their code had been copied
into the MyDoom worm. Later, the Netsky gang released a version that attempts to delete
Bagle and MyDoom worms from infected computers. The Bagle/MyDoom gang replied with a
variant that attempted to do the same with those under control of Netsky.
01. March - DeCSS - Psst ... Reverse engineering is 'presumptively legal'
California's Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a four-year-old order barring the
publication of DeCSS a DVD-cracking Code/Tool on the Internet, finding the injunction
violated the defendant's free speech rights. The ruling does not make it legal in
California to post DeCSS online ... an action that has been found illegal by a federal
appeals court. But the case does mark a rare victory for free speech advocates in the
United States facing off with Hollywood over encryption technology that hampers DVD
copying and prevents discs from playing on unauthorised machines.
Despite the US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the Southern District of New Yorks
ruling on January 20. 2000, that executable source code was not subject to First Amendment protection
against prior restraint of speech, a textual description of the same algorithm may
not be suppressed. A web site was created to explore this issue, and point out the
absurdity of Judge Kaplan's position that source code can be legally differentiated
from other forms of artful expression [click here to see, read and hear more].
29. February 2004 - A rare date ... it's "Leap Day"
26. February 2004 - Report on SPAM producing countries
Anti-spam specialist SOPHOS maps the spam world:
|
56.74% 6.80% 6.24% 5.77% 2.13% 2.00% 1.83% 1.50% 1.31% 1.21% 1.19% 1.05% 12.23% |
22. February - Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us
|
· Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war · Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years · Threat to the world is greater than terrorism |
19. February - And here is another Sucker "Netsky.B@mm"
NetSky.B (also known as Moodown.B) worm was found on 18th of February 2004. It is a
minor variant of NetSky.A worm that appeared 2 days earlier. The worm spreads itself
in e-mails inside a ZIP archive or as an executable attachment. It also copies itself
to shared folders of all available drives. This allows the worm to spread in P2P
(peer-to-peer) and local networks.
18. February 2004 - Bagle-B/Beagle-B is on the loose
Third most rampant virus/worm in e-history. BAGLE-B could rank third in the world worm
rankings behind its illustrious counterparts Sobig.F and Mydoom.A.Sophos said the worm,
also known as Tanx-A, spreads via email and arrives with the subject line 'ID' followed
by various random characters and the message text, 'Yours ID'. The attached .exe file
has a randomly generated filename and can allow mysterious hackers to gain remote access
to infected computers when run. The worm forwards itself through mailbox addresses and
spoofs the "From:" field using addresses found on the infected hard drive. Snorre
Fagerland, with Norwegian Internet security company Norman, told AFP, the worm is
"very serious". The worm is timed to self-destruct on 25 February 2004.
17. February 2004 - What elaborate mind that is ...
Charlie McCreevy (T.D. and Minister for Finance) comment on doubts by opposition
politicians over electronic voting:
This is an insidious, unworthy, diabolic and appalling attempt to raise doubt, where
there is no doubt ... it is purely a cynical, poltical exercise ...
12. February - MyDoom-A is programmed to stop spreading today
Worst ever Windows worm - MyDoom-A has outstripped Love Bug, SirCam and even Sobig-F
in prevalence, but its overall impact is smaller than that of Slammer and Blaster.
MyDoom-A infected anything between 400,000 and one million PCs, according to sundry
estimates from AV firms. On Tuesday, Feb 10, 67,000 IP addresses were actively scanning
to and from port 3127, the back door left open by MyDoom-A, according to the SANS
Institute's Internet Storm Center. MyDoom-A was programmed to launch a denial of
service attack against www.sco.com from infected machines. This – along with its
spread – will cease today. However the back door component of the virus has no time
limit; it is still running on pox-ridden PCs. Infected machines still need to be
identified and decontaminated. This is doubly important because the recently-released
Doomjuice worm uses this back door access to direct infected machines to packet
Microsoft’s Web site.
| 01. January 2004 . . . HAPPY NEW YEAR 2004 . . . |
Comet C/2002 T7 (LINEAR) is approaching Earth and brightening every day. It's not yet
a naked-eye object, but the 7th-magnitude fuzzball is easy to see through backyard
telescopes. The comet lies not far from brilliant Venus in the western sky after
sunset. For the next three months, the comet will continue to brighten as it nears
Earth. Closest approach is expected on May 19th (0.27 AU). At that time C/2002 T7
might glow brighter than a 1st magnitude star--easily seen with the unaided eye.
But in May you'll have to be in the southern hemisphere to see it. Now is the best
time for northern hemisphere observers to look, before the comet plunges south.
The Macintosh Computer is 20 years old today. Seventy-four days after the introduction
of the "Macintosh", 50,000 units had been sold, not that strong a show. Apple refused
to license the OS or the hardware, the 128k memory was not enough and a single floppy
was difficult to use. The "Macintosh" had "Lisa's" user friendly GUI, but initially
missed some of the more powerful features of the "Lisa" like multitasking and the 1 MB
of memory. Jobs compensated by making sure developers created software for the new
"Macintosh", Jobs figured that software was the way to win the consumer over.
The Year of the Wood Monkey begins today, the first day of the Chinese Lunar New Year
and the onset of spring, celebrated by more people in the world than any other
festival. It will be a year to be imaginative, innovative, creative, resourceful,
clever, and observant - all attributes that will lead to success.
Chinese calendar dates back centuries before the Julian calendar the one we use today.
It measures time based on the astronomical observations of the movement of the Sun,
Moon and stars, and is highly accurate. Each year, of a 12 year cycle, is designated
to a specific Animal. For instance, 2003 was the Year of the Ram and 2004 is the Year
of the (Wood) Monkey. January 22,2004. This is the first day in the Year of the Monkey.
It is Year 4702 by Chinese calendar.
Richard Stallman's GNU (GNU is NOT
UNIX) Project is 20 years old today. GNU became synonymous for
"The Free Software Movement". Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To
understand the concept, you should think of "free" as in "free speech", not as in "free beer".
Free software is a matter of the users freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change
and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the
users of the software:
Ireland's prime minister (Taoiseach), Bertie Ahern, has taken over the presidency of
the Council of Ministers - a job he'll hold for the next 6 months. Mr Ahern's six-month
stint in the presidency, launched during a brief ceremony at Dublin Castle, may be
quieter than that of the outgoing incumbent, Italy's gaffe-prone Silvio Berlusconi, but
possibly just as difficult. Ahern also needs to ensure that the new rules of the Constitution
comes up with allow the European Union to function effectively: rules suitable for
6 members just won't work with 25 members.