Prometheus 6

Surgically alters thumbs to better use iPhone
Written by James Benfly  
Wednesday, 08 August 2007

Thomas Martel, 28, of Bonnie Brae is a big guy. So he has a hard time using the features on ever-shrinking user interfaces on devices like his new iPhone. At least, he did, until he had his thumbs surgically altered in a revolutionary new surgical technique known as "whittling."

"From my old Treo, to my Blackberry, to this new iPhone, I had a hard time hitting the right buttons, and I always lost those little styluses," explains Martel. "Sure, the procedure was expensive, but when I think of all the time I save by being able to use modern handhelds so much faster, I really think the surgery will pay for itself in ten to fifteen years. And what it's saving me in frustration - that's priceless."

I'm resorting 'chatter' into the undefined terms bucket. 

The White House, Mr. Feingold said Friday in an interview, “has identified the one major remaining weakness in the Democratic Party, and that’s its unwillingness to stand up to the administration when it’s making a power grab regarding terrorism and national security.”

“They have figured out that all they have to do is start talking about an imminent terrorist threat, back it up against a Congressional recess, and they know the Democrats will cave,” he added.

Reported Drop in Surveillance Spurred a Law
By ERIC LICHTBLAU, JAMES RISEN and MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 — At a closed-door briefing in mid-July, senior intelligence officials startled lawmakers with some troubling news. American eavesdroppers were collecting just 25 percent of the foreign-based communications they had been receiving a few months earlier.

Congress needed to act quickly, intelligence officials said, to repair a dangerous situation.

Some lawmakers were alarmed. Others, jaded by past intelligence warnings, were skeptical.

The report helped set off a furious legislative rush last week that, improbably, broadened the administration’s authority to wiretap terrorism suspects without court oversight.

Campaign Is a Family Project for the Romneys
By MICHAEL LUO

AMES, Iowa, Aug. 10 — They have driven here from California, Ohio, Canada and Texas; flown from Michigan, Utah and Florida. There are aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, in-laws, nieces, nephews and grandchildren.

At last count, 96 members of the Romney clan, a veritable army, have arrived here over the last few days to help out at Saturday’s Republican straw poll, bolstering what is already a huge ground operation for the event that far outstrips any other campaign for the party’s 2008 presidential nomination.

I don't think the Senator really has a problem with the question.

Obama: Enough With "Black Enough"

LAS VEGAS--Speaking before the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Las Vegas, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) directly addressed the charge that he is "not black enough."

He joked about the issue at first, poking fun at a stereotype of blacks. "I apologize for being a little bit late," he said, "but you guys keep asking if I'm black enough, so I figured I would stroll in."

But he turned serious about such questions. "We should ask ourselves why that is," he said. "It is not because of my physical appearance presumably. It's not because of my track record... I think in part we're still locked in this notion if you appeal to white folks, there must be something wrong."

Because if he did, he'd have addressed the speech to those who ask him the question. Really.

In an interview on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," Lute said the military is competing for a "very narrow slice" of high school graduates and that the draft is one of several options to prevent the military from breaking.

"Today, the current means of the all-volunteer force is serving us exceptionally well," Lute said. "It would be a major policy shift, not actually a military but a political policy shift, to move to some other course."

So far though, they're sticking with the traditional American motivation: cash money.

New to the Army recruiters' tool kit is a "quick-ship" cash bonus of $20,000 that goes to recruits who are willing to go to basic training by the end of September....Other bonuses have been raised, including a maximum $20,000 cash bonus to recruits who want to sign up for a two-year enlistment, a bonus that has been raised twice this year, from an original bonus of $6,000 before May....Douglas Smith, a spokesman for the Army's Recruiting Command, said yesterday that the Army is also pushing more recruiters into the field to augment the 8,300 currently working full time. Army officials have asked former recruiters now in different roles to take temporary assignments in their old jobs and are offering them $2,000 bonuses for each soldier they enlist.

And tell your kids

The Army also is asking nearly 5,000 newly trained soldiers to return to their communities to talk up their first months in the service and dispel myths about basic training, and is offering them cash bonuses if they succeed in bringing in new recruits.

"We want them to go and talk amongst their friends about how the training went," Smith said. "That way we're getting a motivated, fresh, young soldier out there talking up the Army."

...don't listen to anyone until they've had at least one deployment. 

Army Recruiting Rebounds in July To Exceed Goals
War Czar Says Draft Still an Option
By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 11, 2007; A03

The U.S. Army announced yesterday that it exceeded its July goal for active-duty recruiting after two months of falling short, the same day the White House war czar said in a radio interview that he believes it makes sense militarily to consider a draft as an option for relieving war-related stresses on U.S. forces.

“I found his comment to be disgracefully insulting,” said John J. McDonnell, a battalion chief and president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association in New York. “I personally saw him on the 11th, and I can’t tell the next time I saw him” at the site after the attacks.

Last month, the International Association of Fire Fighters (the parent organization of the U.F.O.A.) released a video titled, “Rudy Giuliani: Urban Legend,” and has been appealing to its members not to support Mr. Giuliani’s candidacy. 

Giuliani Missteps in Imagery of Sept. 11
By SARAH WHEATON

Rudolph W. Giuliani sought yesterday to clarify comments of a day earlier in which he called himself “one of” the Sept. 11 cleanup workers and said he had been “at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers.” His statement has attracted sharp criticism from first responders and a rival campaign.

You're going to get to see criminals are pretty evenly distributed across the races.

One suspect, the lanky, scruffy Komisarjevsky, lived less than two miles from the Petits -- he is the son of a family with a storied history in Russian opera and theater. Hayes appears to have met Komisarjevsky in a halfway house after they were paroled.

The case also generated a broad outcry because the men were granted early release from prison by a parole board that failed to review transcripts from the men's sentencing hearings, as mandated by a widely ignored Connecticut law. "They are saying they didn't have the funds to make the copies," said state Rep. James A. Amann, speaker of the Connecticut House. "It is the lamest and most inexcusable excuse I've ever heard."

Can you imagine "the son of a family with a storied history in Russian opera" in a Willie Horton-style ad?

Connecticut Horror Punctuates a Trend
Violence Rising Fast Away From Big Cities
By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 11, 2007; A01

CHESHIRE, Conn. -- Ever since "that night," Kevin Mirando, 13, nervously questions his parents at bedtime: Mom, is the house alarm on? Dad, are the doors locked? How about the windows? When they reassure him that all is safe, he still tosses and turns for hours, unable to nod off until he checks and rechecks the bolts and locks himself. Kevin said simply "I'm afraid" as he stood alongside his mother during summer football practice.

Many are feeling unsafe in this New England community since July 23, when a pair of longtime drug users, released on early parole amid procedural errors in their case reviews, allegedly committed a savage crime that has rocked Connecticut.

The two men are charged with invading the home of a noted endocrinologist, William Petit Jr., 50, severely beating him, sexually assaulting and strangling his wife, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, and sexually abusing their daughter Michaela, 11, and killing her and her sister, Hayley, 17. After seven hours with the family, the men set fire to the stately house at the mouth of a quiet cul-de-sac before being caught while trying to ram their way past police cars.

TV broadcasters oppose usage of white spaces because they fear the device will cause interference with television programming and could cause problems with a federally mandated transition from analog to digital signals in February 2009.

Prototype Internet Device Fails FCC Test
Prototype Device to Beam High-Speed Internet on Unused TV Airwaves Fails Government Test
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON

The government gave a failing grade to a prototype device that Microsoft Corp., Google Inc., Dell Inc. and other technology companies said would beam high-speed Internet service over unused television airwaves.

The Federal Communications Commission on July 31 said the devices submitted by the technology coalition could not reliably detect unused TV spectrum, and could also cause interference.

Despite the setback, FCC chairman Kevin Martin said Tuesday the agency still would like to find a way to transmit high-speed Internet service over the unused airwaves.

Take, for example, the iPhone. The key to its simple interface is a screen that responds to several touches at once. It makes rapid text entry possible and allows keyboard-and-mouse-type navigation through Web pages and the phone's built-in applications. The screen is built by a German company called Balda, but the technology itself, licensed to Apple's supplier, is neither American nor European. It was originally developed to aid in the rapid input of Asia's huge, character-based alphabets. It comes from China.

China's iClone
Dan Koeppel

The little gadget was bootleg gold, a secret treasure I'd spent months tracking down. The miniOne looked just like Apple's iPhone, down to the slick no-button interface. But it was more. It ran popular mobile software that the iPhone wouldn't. It worked with nearly every worldwide cellphone carrier, not just AT&T, and not only in the U.S. It promised to cost half as much as the iPhone and be available to 10 times as many consumers. [P6: emphasis added] The miniOne's first news teases—a forum posting, a few spy shots, a product announcement that vanished after a day—generated a frenzy of interest online. Was it real? When would it go on sale? And most intriguing, could it really be even better than the iPhone?

via Racialicious

It's like Horse With No Name with rhythm.  

Fears of a shortage of money available to banks meeting demands for funds by investors as they sold assets prompted the Fed to add $24 billion in reserves to the banking system Thursday.

Responding to fears of a similar credit squeeze in Asia, the Bank of Japan said today that it added 1 trillion yen, or $8.4 billion, to money markets in Tokyo. And the Reserve Bank of Australia said it had lent banks 4.95 billion Australian dollars, or $4.2 billion, its biggest such injection of liquidity since 2003.

Three steep market declines in the past month have begun to raise concerns that deteriorating credit in the United States, rising inflation and higher interest rates are finally starting to end a long period of easy money in global markets.

Stocks Are Volatile After Global Sell-Off
By JEREMY W. PETERS and WAYNE ARNOLD

In a volatile day of trading that followed sharp declines in Asia and Europe, stocks fell sharply on Wall Street early today but closed essentially flat.

The market’s wild swings point to continued concerns about the tightening of credit across the world. But they also indicate optimism among many investors that on balance the global economy will be able to handle higher borrowing costs without significant damage.

At least three other suspects — two of whom were described as also being juveniles — were still being sought, the authorities said, including one juvenile who is possibly a relative of the 15-year-old suspect.

Man Charged in Newark Deaths Pleads Not Guilty
By KAREEM FAHIM and ANDREW JACOBS

NEWARK, Aug. 10 — A third suspect, identified as a teenager, has been arrested in the execution-style slayings of three students here Saturday night, the authorities said.

The two others charged so far are a 28-year-old construction worker and a 15 year old.

The construction worker, Jose Carranza, is an illegal immigrant from Peru who now also faces an order of detention against him by federal authorities, his lawyer and judicial officials said today.

The Question:

Specifically, Malveaux asked: “Are you black enough to sustain the kind of support that you got from your husband, and what makes you the better candidate over a black man in representing the issues regarding African-American community?”

The Answer: 

“I want to represent all of America. I want to be a president for everyone. I am tired of all these false divisions,” Clinton told the crowd. “I have to earn everyone’s vote and nobody should expect that I take you for granted.”

Clinton went on to say, “I’m going to be very eagerly courting your votes, looking for ways that we can work together, and as I said in my opening remarks, putting forth an agenda as president that I cannot accomplish without a broad base of support.”

What you think? 

Ricky Martin wants `family of many colors'

Ricky Martin wants kids, perhaps adopting ''one from each continent,'' if possible.

''It's something we want to begin to create this year, a family of many colors,'' the 35-year-old pop star told reporters Wednesday in Puerto Rico, where he is scheduled to perform this weekend.

It's actually the DOM incompatibilities between browsers I hate.

Need to get that out of my system... 

I want to remind you about The Committee on Capital Markets

Foxes applying for the position of hen house guard
Preemptive class wars (if you only read one of these links, this is the one)
Committee on Capital Markets Regulation wins another one

For those who don't follow links, the information in those posts that is relevant to this one is

The science of helping kids
August 10, 2007

SCIENCE IS talking to policy makers, explaining how they can use neuroscience and child development research to create better preschool, health, and family-strengthening programs -- instead of basing efforts to improve children's lives on politics or personal preferences.

The benefits of policies based on evidence of success are clear in a new report, "A Science-Based Framework for Early Childhood Policy," released this week by Harvard's Center on the Developing Child. There's great promise in helping children: It could make schools more productive, cultivate skilled workers, and promote lifelong well-being that lowers healthcare costs. With this payoff, governments can't afford not to make scientifically sound investments in children.

You KNOW I had to go find the report, right? Here's the summary of what they found.

I hate dog owners
The disproportionate outcry against Michael Vick proves it: Americans are way too irrational about canines.

[A] friend of the 15-year-old suspect’s family, Noe Palacios, said that the boy had been enticed by the gang culture in the neighborhood, and that a 16-year-old cousin who he spends a lot of time with was in a local gang.

Another friend of the young suspect , a 13-year-old girl, who said she attended the Mount Vernon School with him, said: “He was a cool guy, but he was in a gang. He used to fight a lot.”

Another man, Halsted Diamond, 23, a cook at a bar, said that the youth had started hanging out with the wrong crowd, and smoking and drinking. “He was a skinny and fragile guy trying to be a big man,” he said. 

Man and Youth Held in Killings of 3 in Newark
By KAREEM FAHIM and ANDREW JACOBS

Since 2000, the New York metropolitan region lost nearly 250,000 white residents. The largest decline was in Nassau County (71,651), followed by Queens (59,056). Since 2000, the Bronx lost nearly 11 percent of its white population; Manhattan’s rose by nearly 9 percent.

I was wondering where all the white people went.

But non-Hispanic white New York City residents became a minority in each borough except Staten Island by 1990, as they did in Hudson and Essex Counties in New Jersey.

PSYCHE! I live on Staten Island.

Asians Make Broad Gains in New York Population. More of a data dump than an article.

Ohio: Man Is Killed After Asking for a Quarter
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

A Cincinnati woman shot and killed a panhandler who asked her for 25 cents, the police say. “He asked her for a quarter,” Chief Tom Streicher said. “That’s apparently all there was to it.” The man, Donald Francis, who the police believe was homeless, stood outside a gasoline station Monday asking people for money. The woman, Geraldine Beasley, had complained about Mr. Francis to someone else, and when he approached her, she pulled out a gun and shot him, the police said. Mr. Francis, 44, died at the scene. Ms. Beasley, 62, was charged with murder and yesterday was ordered held in lieu of $500,000 bail.

Gotta get ready for the ABS panel I'm on with Rachel. Given the combination of personal slowness and an hour and a half travel time I must begin my preparations.

And I got technical issues of the type that spawns paranoia in lesser men. And since I am not a great man, I will ask the feds to please get the bugs out of their internet tapping routines. My cable service hasn't been the same since they were required to make that option available for the Feds. 

In fact, I'm only posting this now, while my video service, and even the PVR, is out of service and the service line is busy, yet telephone and internet connectivity and the non-PVR connected box is fine, and I can't even play the recorded shows, on the off chance it's just me and not a broader problem. This way they can see whatever they need to see to fine tune stuff. Or they could just read the damn site.

Okay, I lied. I have a comment.

This was a set-up. The first caller was NOT a Democrat. Even if a Democrat felt that way, he wouldn't say it out loud.