By Jennifer Hill Reuters - 2 hours 58 minutes ago

LONDON (Reuters) - The communications industry regulator said on Monday it would crack down on misleading sales practices in the mobile phone market, after a voluntary code failed to bring operators to heel.

Ofcom said it would introduce mandatory rules after the code introduced last summer failed to stop the growing problem of "slamming" -- where rogue salesmen switch people to expensive long-term contracts -- and "cashback" promotions that do not deliver.

"Slamming" involves salesmen cold-calling with the promise of a free phone upgrade or discounts. Customers think this comes with no strings attached, but then find they have been locked into an expensive new deal.

The five main mobile phone networks -- O2, T-Mobile, Orange, Vodafone and 3 -- signed up to the guidelines on how they vet the resellers they do business with in July last year.

The code set out prohibited sales and marketing practices, how retailers must comply and complaints processes.

But Ofcom said it had since continued to receive a large number of consumer complaints about mobile mis-selling and cashback deals -- an average of around 700 per month in January, compared with 460 six months earlier.

Mandatory rules will introduce penalties of up to 10 percent of turnover for those who fail to comply.

Ed Richards, chief executive of Ofcom, said: "The UK has one of the more competitive mobile phone sectors in the world, but strong competition is no excuse for marketing malpractice.

"We warned the industry last year that unless it cleaned up its act we would consider introducing new rules.

"The facts show that this hasn't happened, so we are now proposing tougher measures to protect consumers from unacceptable sales and marketing practices."

A consultation will run until April 29 and Ofcom hopes to have the new rules in place by the summer.

But Rob Barnes, head of broadband and mobiles at price comparison Web site Moneysupermarket.com, said it was a case of "too little too late".

"Consumers are still being ripped off, particularly on cashback deals," he said.

"If these steps had been taken earlier, thousands of people may not have suffered at the hands of the providers."

Almost a third of people have not been successful in claiming all of promised cashback and a tenth have not received any money, a YouGov poll of 2,500 adults for Moneysupermarket found.

People who have received a slamming call can contact the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) if they want to register a complaint, and have seven days to terminate any unwanted contract, according to OFT rules.

Consumers can also register their mobile number at a Web site run by the Telephone Preference Service (www.tpsonline.org.uk). In theory, after 28 days this should stop all UK-based telemarketing calls, but it will not prevent unsolicited text messages.

(Editing by Stephen Addison)

Barack Obama speaks about race during an address in Philadelphia. Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP

Barack Obama took the biggest risk of his presidential campaign so far when he today refused to disown his controversial pastor, Jeremiah Wright, in a potentially make-or-break speech on race.

Obama condemned what he called controversial remarks by Wright about patriotism and race, but, tellingly, he tried to put the pastor's comments into a wider context of race relations in the US.

"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community," Obama said in his speech in Philadelphia. He portrayed Wright, 66,as a product of his time, brought up under discriminatory race laws and a fighter in the civil rights movement.

But in an extremely personal speech, Obama said that it was time for the US to move on towards a genuinely multi-racial society.

Obama has been on the defensive over the last week as television footage showed Wright, pastor of Obama's church in Chicago until last month, saying 'God damn America' and talking in incendiary terms about how the black community is discriminated against.

Obama is behind in the polls ahead of the primary in Pennsylvania next month. Clinton's team has been battering him over his relationship with Wright.

Obama confronted head-on the questions that have been raised. He said he had condemned, in unequivocal terms, Wright's statements. "For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed."

He continued: "But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic."

In spite of that, he would not turn his back on the pastor. "As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me." He added: "Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not."

The crux of the matter, he said, is that "race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

"The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American."

The speech was a test of whether Obama, as the Hillary Clinton team, repeatedly alleges, is capable of withstanding pressure when faced with a crisis.

Before the speech, Joe Trippi, a veteran Democratic strategist and former adviser to John Edwards, who pulled out of the race earlier this year, told CBS's Early Show: "It's either going to be the crisis of his candidacy, or a shining moment for him."

Obama's advisers are concerned about the impact on white voters in the Pennsylvania primary, which is to be held next month, and the potential damage that the race issue could inflict in November's general election if he was the Democratic candidate.
America's claims to be a post-racial society have been undermined by the introduction of race into the Democratic campaign and the fracturing of the party vote in primaries in some states, where an overwhelming majority of African-Americans have voted for Obama and a majority of whites for Clinton.

Wright retired last month as pastor of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. He helped bring Obama into the church, presided over his marriage to Michelle and acted as his spiritual adviser.

Constant replays on US television of Wright shouting "God damn America" and railing about discrimination against blacks risk alienating some white voters.

A Rasmussen poll published yesterday said Wright's comments made 56% of the electorate less likely to vote for Obama. The focus on Wright came days after Clinton broke ties with a long-time supporter, Geraldine Ferraro, over her claim that Obama would not have done as well as he has if he had been white.

Obama rarely spoke about race last year as his campaign team tried to present him as a candidate that transcends race. But he has positioned himself as a champion of black rights, an heir to the mantle of the Reverend Martin Luther King, in a speech last year and again in Atlanta in January on Martin Luther King day. He has also criticised those sections of the black community where anti-semitism and anti-homosexuality were rife.

The California Assembly, apparently facing an $8 billion deficit, has introduced a bill that would apply sales taxes to "media downloads," namely the music sales going through iTunes (which, as we've reported, is challenging even retailer giant Walmart for music sales numbers). But it seems as though (since new taxes require a 2/3 majority in California) they're going about it in a pretty weird way.
Basically, to duck the majority rule, they're instead trying to have "digital property" count like normal, taxable property. That way, all they're doing is changing a definition, not actually adding a new tax. Even then, they've got another hurdle to jump -- the California Assembly, of course, can only tax things bought in California, unless they charge a "use" tax, which is for people things buy elsewhere but only use in California. Which no one ever pays anyway. Yeah, it's weird.
Eventually, they'll probably pull something off -- Apple already charges sales tax in quite a few states, so it's not surprising that California, Apple's home base, would try as well. It seems like politics is making the process a little bumpier than elsewhere, though.
[Via Macdailynews]

Not like we needed NVIDIA (of all companies) to tell us that the GeForce 9800 GX2 was more than a figment of our imagination, but nevertheless, one of the worst kept secrets in GPU history is finally "official." Reportedly, this beast of a card is available today from a number of retailers for upwards of $600 (MSRP), and just in case you're not absolutely sure such graphical prowess is really worth that kind of change, feel free to take a glance at early tests and the full review listed below before digging into that 401(k).
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Read - NVIDIA's official GeForce 9800 GX2 page
Read - GeForce 9800 GX2 gets reviewed
Read - GeForce 9800 GX2 gets reviewed (again)
Read - GeForce 9800 GX2 gets taken apart on video

Remember those dirt-cheap refurbished iPhones we mentioned you could snag in-store? Well it looks like AT&T has decided to share the bounty with the public at large, and has begun taking orders for the $249 8GB models online. If you've been on the fence, here's your chance to get in for $150 less than retail (and sadly for you early adopters, a whopping $350 tumble in price). In our experience, you can grab one in person with no activation, though it looks like you'll have to sign on the dotted line to have it delivered.
Update: According to our commenters, you can get these mailed to you activation / contract free.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

By Matt. Filed under Development.

A customizable dashboard, multi-file upload, built-in galleries, one-click plugin upgrades, tag management, built-in Gravatars, full text feeds, and faster load times sound interesting? Then WordPress 2.5 might be the release for you. It’s been in the oven for a while, and we’re finally ready to open the doors a bit to give you a taste.

For the past few months, we’ve been working with our friends at Happy Cog — Jeffrey Zeldman, Jason Santa Maria, and Liz Danzico — to redesign WordPress from the ground-up. The result is a new way of interacting with WordPress that will remain familiar to seasoned users while improving the experience for everyone. This isn’t just a fresh coat of paint — we’ve re-thought the look of WordPress, as well as how it’s organized so that you can forget about the software and focus on your own creative pursuits.

Here are a few vignettes of what’s in store.

The Dashboard

The Dashboard’s most important role is to inform quickly and get you to where you’re headed in the admin. In interviewing users, we found that most of you ignore the Dashboard entirely — its useful information being mostly hidden in an overly complex design. The new Dashboard is focused on the most relevant tasks at hand: a quick summary of what’s published and scheduled for publication, the latest comments and incoming links, blog stats, and WordPress updates and news. You can add your own RSS feeds and edit the way information is presented so that the new Dashboard conforms to the way you use WordPress.

Navigation

The WordPress navigation has confounded even sophisticated users. With the new design, we’ve cut the number of navigation options in half, separating the primary functions (writing, managing posts and pages, editing the blog’s design, and managing comments) from secondary functions. This presents information at a more comfortable pace, revealing only the information that’s necessary. Everything you need is still there — just better organized. (Especially for people new to WP.)

Write

By far, the most frequently accessed part of WordPress is the Write screen. It gets the job done, but its myriad options can be overwhelming. The new write screen only displays the information that you’ll use most often. It displays the most common fields in a way that makes posting incredibly easy. Additional options are hidden away until you need them. The new Write screen anticipates the natural flow of the way you write, and is smart enough to remember the way you left it so that your preferred writing environment is always quickly available. The new visual editor even has a handy full-screen mode to help block out distractions while composing your newest post. (My personal favorite new feature.)

Manage

The Manage screens have been redesigned and unified so that now, managing your pages, posts, media, and comments all use similar, consistent interfaces. We’ve omitted superfluous information and made what’s important faster to find. We believe these changes will make you a faster, more proficient blogger.

You might also notice there are some new colors, the dashboard feels much fresher and lighter. If you’re jonesing for the old look under your user options you can now select the “classic” colors and get those old blues back. (It’s also pluggable so people can easily add or share their own color schemes.)

If you make frequent backups and you’re interested in helping us out with development by testing the new code, download and install Release Candidate 1 of WordPress 2.5, and join our testers mailing list to report any bugs you find in the code.

We’re also interested in feedback on the new interface and would love to hear your opinions, thoughts, rants, raves, and anything in between. We created a special email address just for the occasion: 2.5-feedback@wordpress.org.

The software is basically done and stable, and could be released today, but we’d like to incorporate feedback from a wider audience before making it available to the general public. After a few days of your feedback we’ll set a final release date. Personally, I can’t wait.

Today more than ever, the Web is a global game. Below are charts from a new State of the Internet report from comScore that paints a picture of global competition on the Web.

In 1996, two thirds of all people online (66 percent) lived in the U.S. By last October, that had completely flipped, with 77 percent of the online population living in the rest of the world and only 23 percent in the U.S. The U.S. still has the largest total number of Web surfers (162 million a month), but China is catching up fast (with 96 million):

In China, homegrown sites such as TenCent, Baidu and Sina all reach more native Web surfers than Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo:

In fact, the leading Websites in many big markets such as Russia, Japan, and South Korea tend to be homegrown as well:

Social networks are the fastest-growing category of sites (nearly 60 percent annually), but they still lag in terms of penetration (less than 40 percent) behind photo sites, entertainment sites, search, and portals:

The fastest growing of all social networks, of course, has been Facebook, which jumped from the second pack to where it is now running neck-and-neck with MySpace:

Drilling down into search, Google still dominates with 62 percent share worldwide:

And it dominates search even more in other countries than it does in the U.S., where it only commands a 53 percent market share (compared to above 90 percent in parts of Europe and Latin America):

Looking at the efficiency of its search ads, Google puts up an ad against only about half of its searches, whereas Yahoo puts up an ad 75 percent of the time. Yet for those searches where an ad is shown, Google gets 0.24 paid click per search compared to 0.18 for Yahoo and 0.14 for Microsoft. (Search advertising on AOL and Ask are also powered by Google and they show the same or better clickthrough rates).

For display ads, Yahoo and MySpace control the most market share, with 19 and 15 percent each, respectively. (Microsoft comes in a distant third with 6.6 percent):

The report also gives an estimate of the unduplicated reach of Microsoft and Yahoo. A combined Microsoft-Yahoo would have 173 million unique visitors a month across the globe, a 10 percent share of all page views, 32 percent share of search, and 24 percent share of display ads:

Both Microsoft and Yahoo each have about 260 million Webmail users (with duplication), with Google’s Gmail bringing up third place with 87 million (no wonder Google execs keep bringing up market concentration concerns in relation to mail and instant messaging):

Cable news focuses much of its time on 3/4 topics a day and relies on wires and brief “tell stories” for much of the rest of the news. There's 2 distinct parts to a cable day, daytime is more focused on crime/disaster where nighttime increasingly is more about topics that spark controversy and suit the particular audience that tunes in.

read more | digg story

The historic city of Philadelphia hasn't been known for its skyline in a long time. Now, some developers want to change that with a proposal to construct what would become the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere and the second-tallest building in the world, standing at 1,500 feet, with a very-high degree of energy and water efficiency.

read more | digg story

Joel Escalona, the same dude that brought us the Seven alarm clock concept is back with a design for a USB bomb-shaped storage device. I can definitely see where he came up with the design—bombs are cool, the cord makes for a great fuse and the size of the device itself would mean that it could potentially hold a massive amount of data. But what would keep this sucker from rolling off your desk? Since it is only a concept, we will probably never know. [Joel Escalona via Pan-Dan via Techabob]

Frequent Photoshop users can save time and energy using automated Photoshop actions when processing images. The Epic Edits weblog explains how. First, make the actions palette is visible, and create a new action. Then, record all the steps you want to automate on one image, and stop recording when you're finished. Once your action is complete, then you can use it on any images going forward, without repeating the steps again.

How to Create Photoshop Actions [Epic Edits]

Hamed Zalmy/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Canadian soldiers inspected the site of a suicide attack against a NATO military convoy Wednesday in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

WASHINGTON — President Bush’s efforts to cement a trans-Atlantic legacy by adding three nations to NATO appear in disarray as the alliance struggles with internal political divisions, new tensions with Russia and the combat mission in Afghanistan that have exposed disparities of might and will among current members, officials, diplomats and analysts said.

As Mr. Bush and other leaders of the alliance prepare to meet in Romania in three weeks, invitations to Albania, Croatia and Macedonia to join have become mired in a spat with Greece over Macedonia’s name and more fundamental concerns that none of the three prospects have met all of the domestic political qualifications for membership.

And the administration’s hope of extending “road maps” to membership to two former Soviet republics, Ukraine and Georgia, has run into strong opposition from some of the United States’ closest allies, including Germany, which fear provoking Russia, according to two NATO-nation diplomats and a Bush administration official.

The potential for confrontation with Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, who will attend part of the summit meeting in Bucharest, has caused such anxiety that Mr. Bush has dispatched his secretaries of state and defense to Moscow for meetings on Monday and Tuesday to soothe some of Russia’s anger. Their agenda includes American plans to install missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, which Russia strongly opposes, although NATO expansion is likely to be discussed, officials said.

Overshadowing the debate over possible new members has been an increasingly polarized dispute over NATO’s operations in Afghanistan. Bush administration officials and lawmakers now openly accuse strong American allies of shirking their duty to fight a resurgent Taliban, reluctant to bolster the NATO force of about 40,000 troops.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned last month that NATO could become a two-tiered alliance with “some allies willing to fight and die to protect people’s security, and others who are not.”

With violence rising in Afghanistan to the highest levels since the American-led invasion in 2001, the administration has been pressing NATO members to contribute more troops. The United States is adding 3,200 marines; of its current force of about 28,000, about 15,500 Americans serve in the NATO mission and 12,500 are involved in separate counterterrorism operations solely under American command. So far, however, few allies have stepped forward, and those that have continue to impose restrictions on where and how their troops will operate.

Canada, which has sent 2,500 troops, has threatened to withdraw unless another ally sends at least 1,000 troops to help secure Afghanistan’s restive southern area.

“We face a crisis in Afghanistan that is extraordinarily difficult for our country and for the NATO alliance,” the under secretary of state for political affairs, R. Nicholas Burns, said just before stepping down at the end of last month. “For NATO, it may be an existential crisis.”

For Mr. Bush, the expansion of NATO to include new members is part of what he hopes will be a legacy of promoting democracy and liberty, in this case in the formerly Communist Balkans, which were ravaged by war in the 1990s and are still haunted by ethnic divisions.

During Mr. Bush’s presidency, NATO has added seven new members — Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — bringing the number of allies to 26.

According to officials and diplomats, the administration has pressed for membership for Albania, Croatia and Macedonia to such an extent that they were given an unusual six-month extension to prove that they had made sufficient progress on a series of political and legal reforms.

Even now, just three weeks before the summit meeting where any official invitations to join the alliance would be issued, the administration has not submitted to Congress required reports measuring the worthiness of Albania, Europe’s poorest country, and Croatia and Macedonia, states that emerged from the violent breakup of Yugoslavia.

Administration officials said they remained hopeful that the summit meeting in Bucharest would be a success, producing a compromise allowing invitations to all three aspirants and an agreement that allies redouble their efforts in Afghanistan.

Expanding NATO remains politically popular in the United States. At a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, no lawmaker or official spoke against inviting the three countries, but even supporters raised concerns, especially given the debate over NATO’s mission in Afghanistan.

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the Democratic chairman of the committee, said many were concerned “that we may build this so big that it can’t function.” One reason the alliance can be cumbersome is that its members operate on consensus, meaning that one country can essentially block action. That is the case with Greece, a NATO member since 1952, and Macedonia.

Since Macedonia declared independence in 1991, Greece has vehemently objected to its use of the name Republic of Macedonia, saying it implies territorial claims to the Greek province of the same name — an assertion Macedonia has publicly disavowed.

The alliance’s protocols have become even more complicated and politically delicate in Afghanistan because each ally has been able to put conditions — diplomatically called “caveats” — on where and how they will conduct military operations.

Some officials quietly concede a point made by a number of academic analysts: that disagreements over how to carry out the security mission in Afghanistan reflect the uncertain evolution of the alliance.

“Make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan,” said a report by the Atlantic Council of the United States, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to fostering ties between North America and Europe. More surprising was that the report’s chairman was Gen. James L. Jones, who served as NATO’s supreme military commander until 2006.

Mr. Bush argues that the alliance has evolved from a purely military force to defend against the old Soviet superpower to an organization that fosters political stability and democratic reform in Europe and extends its influence outside its members’ borders, first in the war over Kosovo and then in Afghanistan.

The projection of NATO’s power has led many inside and outside to argue that the alliance has become a weaker military force, as European countries lowered their defense spending, while the United States increased its own.

Stanley Kober, a research fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington who has written extensively about NATO, said the alliance continued to expand without giving sufficient thought to its immediate troubles, especially in Afghanistan.

“We’re now talking about NATO being in an existential crisis because of Afghanistan,” Mr. Kober said. “It seems to me that before you make promises to other countries, we should be able to resolve the existential crisis first.”

He also cited tensions created by Kosovo’s declaration of independence and Russia’s fierce opposition to missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic, the issues at the heart of the visit to Moscow by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the defense secretary, Mr. Gates.

Mr. Kober called NATO’s expansion “a train that’s going forward on its own momentum.”

“In the meantime,” he added, “the wheels are falling off.”

Administration officials dispute that. They argue that expanding the alliance and shoring up operations in Afghanistan will stabilize NATO and enhance global security. One senior official noted that the willingness of Albania, Croatia and Macedonia to contribute troops to Afghanistan and Iraq had weighed heavily on President Bush’s willingness to support their membership bids.

The administration officials say that Croatia, Albania and Macedonia have made significant strides to address at least some, if not all of the internal shortcomings identified in their membership applications.

Albania, which was ranked 105th out of 180 countries on Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index, agreed under pressure to appoint a special prosecutor, an administration official noted. (Croatia and Macedonia fared better on the index, at 65th and 84th.)

Jeffrey D. McCausland, a retired Army colonel and now visiting professor of international law and diplomacy at the Dickinson School of Law at Pennsylvania State University, said that using NATO to advance political objectives, even noble ones like stability, risked losing sight of the alliance’s fundamental obligation to defend itself against external threats.

“At the end of the day,” he said, “one has to balance any membership question for NATO: Are these countries security providers or security customers?”

The mother of a girl whose birthday party was gatecrashed by up to 2,000 revellers after a "shout out" on Radio 1 has urged the BBC to review policy.

Youngsters caused damage estimated at tens of thousands of pounds to the Brooks family's grade-II listed mansion on the outskirts of Dartmoor, Devon.

The party at Colehayes Park, Bovey Tracey, was stormed after details were put on the web and Pete Tong's R1 show.

The BBC said the name and address of the venue had not been specified.

Sarah Brooks was expecting about 100 invited guests at her 18th birthday party on Friday night, but several hundred turned up.

The partygoers left a trail of damage

Four bouncers hired by Sarah's father Reg to protect the family's huge property were overwhelmed by the gatecrashers.

Sarah's mother, Rebecca Brooks, described the event as "terrifying".

She said: "Bottles and cans were strewn from the house to the village, which is two miles away."

Officers from Devon and Cornwall Police, who eventually cleared the mansion house using dogs, were pelted with glass by the drunken revellers.

Police confirmed officers had also dealt with disturbances at two nearby pubs and some arrests had been made.

COLEHAYES PARK

Grade II listed granite mansion

Mansion is mainly Georgian, but parts date back to 16th Century

Set in 20 acres of land

Field studies centre for schools and universities

Mansion's dormitories can accommodate about 70 people

Local residents said many of the revellers continued to rampage through the streets of Bovey Tracey.

Rebecca Brooks said she had sincerely apologised to local businesses and neighbours.

During the Radio 1 item Pete Tong stated: "We're getting ready for a huge mansion party - 500-plus people going - it's in Bovey."

Mrs Brooks said even if addresses were not mentioned, big homes were identifiable in rural areas.

She said: "I'm going to write a stiff letter to ask the BBC to review its policy. They have to be careful, particularly to rural communities.

Pete Tong gives shout outs on his show every week

"People only had to look for the mansion in Bovey Tracey. In this instance, they may has well have just given the exact address."

She added: "We've all learned lessons, and this is the last party we will be hosting for any of our daughters."

The BBC said Pete Tong gave shout outs on his show every week and he would never knowingly give an identifiable address for a private party.

A BBC spokesman said: "Of course, if the family makes a formal complaint we will fully investigate."

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California resident Nancy Fiddler has put for sale on eBay a mastodon skeleton that takes up most of her garage. The minimum bid -- $115,000 (57,000 pounds).

Her family's relationship with the Ice Age relative of the elephant has run its course.

Fiddler said they need the money an online auction could bring, and her son would prefer to build hot rod cars in the space the creature now occupies.

The Fiddlers also would like to use their sauna, which in the last four years has served as an additional repository for the huge plastic casts containing the animal's bones.

"We needed a safe, dry place," Fiddler said, explaining why they chose to sacrifice the sauna. "The mastodon takes precedence."

Mastodons, which stood 10 feet (3 metres) tall with trunks and tusks, migrated to North America about 15 million years ago and ranged all over the continent with saber tooth tigers, giant sloths and American camels. All met their extinction about 10,000 years ago.

A ranch hand discovered a mastodon tooth on the Fiddler ranch in northeastern California in 1997. Excavation revealed a rare, nearly complete mastodon skeleton that included everything but the tusks.

"It's a beautiful specimen," said paleontological consultant Bruce Hanson, who helped move the skeleton to the Oakland Museum of Natural History, where it was on display for several years.

After the museum made a replica, the Fiddlers moved the mastodon to the tasting room of a California wine bar. Then it found its way to their garage.

One paleontologist said he was sceptical that the Fiddlers would get as much as they want for the mastodon.

"What is it going to do? Sit on someone's mantle?" said Mark Goodwin of the University of California Museum of Paleontology. "I would prefer to see it donated to a museum. This is our fossil heritage."

(Editing by Xavier Briand)

GORDA, Calif. - Try not to run low on gas in the tiny Big Sur town of Gorda, where a gallon of unleaded regular costs $5.20. And it's $5.40 a gallon for premium.

Amerigo Gas Station employee James Willman says at least once a day he gets an earful from motorists who pull into Gorda, which is about 35 miles north of Cambria on scenic Highway 1.

Willman says "they say all kinds of stuff — `You ought to be shot,' or 'Where's your mask?'"

The good-humored Willman usually responds, "Hey, I just work here."

Many potential customers slow down, look at the price, then keep on rolling.

Station manager Leo Flores says the high price reflects the cost of bringing fuel to the town's remote location as well as its reliance on a diesel generator for all of its power.

___

Information from: The Tribune, http://www.sanluisobispo.com

Both international and U.S. audiences overwhelmingly favored David K. Zandi, motion picture executive, actor, champion equestrian, model, and honest to goodness Persian prince. David has also studied both fencing and sword fighting, so the only way he could be better suited for the role is if he actually possessed control of the Sands of Time.

read more | digg story

Since The ASUS Eee PC got popular, competitors have emerged, including Elonex, Everex, ECS, Acer, MSI, HP and others. Most have introduced aggressive pricing, but struggled to approach ASUS's $400 entry-level price point. Now, Norhtec plans to ship a sub-$300 laptop called the Gecko! Click for details.

read more | digg story

For the first time in 70 years, the U.S. Supreme Court will take on the question of whether individual Americans have the right to keep and bear arms or whether it a collective right of the people for service in a state militia.

read more | digg story

...the Bush Pentagon moved to suppress a study Bush doesn't like: The Pentagon on Wednesday canceled plans for broad public release of a study that found no pre-Iraq war link between late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the al Qaida terrorist network.Suppressing information it doesn't like is a hallmark of the Bush family.

read more | digg story

Why can't you just show us the numbers? I mean... it's not like it's all THAT hard to hire an accountant to do your taxes for you, right? Or is there something that we should know about how you spend your money that might compromise your position in the race?Personally, I'm tired of seeing all of your hate. Please, stop.

read more | digg story

DadHacker author Landon Dyer has posted a compelling account of his time working as a programmer for Atari back in the early 80s, where he created, among other things, the cartridge game version of Donkey Kong. It's a fun read and gives a pretty unique perspective on the early days of the video game industry.

read more | digg story

Spider-Man's director is going real. Reality TV that is. After nearly two years of talking with the CW about this project, Sam Raimi is prepping a summer reality series called 13. Considering Raimi's unique vision, as seen in the Spider-Man movies and other features like Darkman and Evil Dead, you have to hope that he'll bring something fresh to a genre as played out as reality.

Raimi with co-executive produce the eight-episodes of 13 with a renown reality producer, Jay Bienstock (Survivor and The Apprentice). Also attached is Robert Tapert, Sam's Ghost House Productions partner.



Bienstock
has only recently been added to the mix, and he's there to make this
show a reality -- really. The previous producers couldn't make it a go.
"The idea of doing horror/scary/reality show with Sam Raimi and Rob
Tapert -- there's nothing better," he said.

The idea for the show -- which was once called House of Horrors
-- is a bunch of people living in a house where they must face their
fears as one after another are killed (not really) off the show. There
will be 13 (like the title, get it?) contestants; the survivor (ha-ha)
wins.



"Think about those old movies -- we want to put people
in a place like that, where they have to deal with their fears and
anxieties. They'll end up surprising one another," said Bienstock.
"Those old movies" could mean anything from the hotel in The Shining to the castle in Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein. I don't think it'll be the groovy Big Brother house with plastic furniture, but I could be wrong.

Watch for all eight horrific episodes this summer on the CW -- just cover your eyes if you don't like scary movies.

The Wall Street Journal tries to understand what makes the web so
addictive, suggesting through studies done by neuroscientist Irving
Biederman that our attraction to the internet may be evolutionary.

It
is something we seem hard-wired to do, says Dr. Biederman. When you
find new information, you get an opioid hit (the brain's
pleasure-enhancing neurotransmitters), and we are junkies for those.
You might call us 'infovores.' "

Biederman goes on to
discuss how, like with food, we're hard-wired for scarcity, so we don't
have a good sense of limits in the face of an abundance of information.
This addiction, as most of us know firsthand, can be a real
productivity killer, which requires us to employ self-control when we
hit the web. So what do you think? Are you powerless to the web? Share
your thoughts in the comments.

Why We're Powerless To Resist Grazing On Endless Web Data [WSJ]

By Chris Buckley and Benjamin Kang Lim

BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Saturday gave Tibetan independence
protesters an ultimatum to surrender after riots in Lhasa which killed
at least 10 people in the worst unrest in the region for two decades.

The tough response by the Chinese authorities came after fierce
protests on Friday which contradicted China's claims of stability and
tarnished a carefully-nurtured image of national harmony as it readies
to stage the Olympic Games in August.

The official Tibetan judicial authorities gave protesters until Monday night to turn themselves in and benefit from leniency.

"Criminals who do not surrender themselves by the deadline will be
sternly punished according to the law," said a notice on the Tibetan
government Web site (www.tibet.gov.cn).

International pressure mounted on Beijing to show restraint.
Australia, the United States and Europe urged the Chinese authorities
to find a peaceful outcome, while Taiwan, which China claims as its
own, predictably condemned Beijing for launching a crackdown.

Xinhua news agency said 10 "innocent civilians" had been shot or
burnt to death in the street clashes in the remote, mountain capital
which has been sealed off. The dead included two people killed by
shotguns.

A source close to the Tibetan government-in-exile, however,
questioned the official death toll of 10. He said at least five Tibetan
protesters had been shot dead by troops.

Some Tibet monitoring organizations outside the country put the death toll at up to 32.

A Western tourist said that Lhasa itself was like a ghost town on
Saturday, though it was packed with Chinese soldiers. Many Tibetans had
tied white prayer scarves to their doors in a gesture of protest.

DALA LAMA ACCUSED

China has accused followers of Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the
Dalai Lama, of engineering the unrest in the run-up to the Beijing
Olympics. The Olympic torch relay will pass through Tibet in a few
weeks time.

The riots emerged from a volatile mix of pre-Olympics protests,
diplomatic friction over Tibet and local discontent with the harsh ways
of the region's Communist Party leadership.

The protests, the worst since 1989 in the disputed region, have
thrust China's role as Olympic host and its policy towards Tibet back
into the international spotlight.

A rash of angry blog posts appeared after the deaths were confirmed.
Hollywood actor Richard Gere, a Buddhist and an activist for Tibetan
causes, suggested an Olympic boycott.

Official statements suggested the government reaction in coming days
would be tough, with Tibetan Buddhist monasteries -- traditional focal
point of opposition to Beijing's rule -- and nunneries being brought
under tighter control.

The regional communist-controlled government said those who harbored
protesters would be punished and it offered rewards and protection to
informers.

An announcement on Tibet television urged residents to denounce the "malicious intent" of the Dalai Lama.

Tibetan crowds in the remote mountain city attacked government
offices, burnt vehicles and shops and threw stones at police in
Friday's confrontations. Many people were injured.

Chinese television showed footage of rioters trashing shops and
trying to break down the entrance of a bank, and plumes of smoke
floating above the city.

A Reuters picture showed a protester setting afire a Chinese
national flag. Another depicted security personnel shielding themselves
against rocks hurled by protesters.

Qiangba Puncog, the top government official in Tibet, told reporters
in Beijing that Tibetan authorities had not fired any shots to quell
the violence.

PRAYER SCARVES

John Ackerly, of the International Campaign for Tibet, said in an
e-mailed statement he feared "hundreds of Tibetans have been arrested
and are being interrogated and tortured".

The Free Tibet Campaign organization cited eyewitnesses as saying
that thousands marched on government buildings in Xiahe, an ethnic
Tibetan area of China, and raised a Tibetan national flag at a school.

In Lhasa, Danish tourist Bente Walle, 58, said: "Today Lhasa is completely closed and there is Chinese military all over."

Adding that many people were tying white prayer scarves on doors,
she said: "The Tibetans put them on their doors to tell everybody: here
is a Tibetan."

"We are fully capable of maintaining the social stability of Tibet,"
Xinhua quoted an official as saying in a statement repeated across
Chinese state media on Saturday.

(Additional reporting by Guo Shipeng, Nick Mulvenney, Ben Blanchard
and Lindsay Beck in Beijing, John Ruwitch in Chengdu and Sophie Taylor
in Shanghai)

(Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Here at Just A Guy Thing, we like to see sports that challenge men to push themselves beyond the mental, emotional, and physical boundaries of these rather soft sporting occasions.With this in mind we have scoured the four corners of the globe to find our favorite manly sports that will literally kick your ass.

read more | digg story

As her instant celebrity status continues to climb in the wake of the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal, Ashley Alexandra Dupre has now received a $1 million offer to bare it all.A rep for Hustler Magazine has confirmed exclusively to Access Hollywood a seven-figure offer will be made to the call girl.

read more | digg story

China on Thursday accused the United States of human rights hypocrisy, as it branded the US invasion of Iraq the "greatest humanitarian disaster" of the modern world. "America's arrogant critique on the human rights of other countries are always accompanied by a deliberate ignoring of serious human rights problems on its own territory,"

read more | digg story

Snakes are increasingly invading the eastern Amazon's largest city, driven from the rain forest by loggers and ranchers who are destroying the reptiles' natural habitat, the government's environmental protection agency said Tuesday.

read more | digg story

It had seemed a romantic and highly original way to propose to the love of your life with a £6,000 diamond ring. Lefkos Hajji, 28, wanted to make his engagement one his girlfriend would never forget, only to have his dreams cruelly snatched from his grasp by a gust of wind

read more | digg story

Mission specialist Rick Linnehan works on the Canadian robot, named Dextre. Photograph: NASA TV/AP

A $200m (£100m) robot at the international space station was today paralysed and waiting for a software fix to reanimate it.

The Canadian robot, known as Dextre, is designed to help astronauts avoid difficult and dangerous spacewalks for repairs to the space station. But today it was immobile because of a problem getting power to its joints.

The machine, which is nearly 3.7m long and weighs 1.5 tonnes, needs heat to keep its limbs and electronics working in space. Engineers from the Canadian Space Agency suspect the problem is caused by timer software and are planning to beam up a fix to make the robot active.

Astronauts on the space shuttle Endeavour began a 16-day mission on Tuesday, which includes transporting Dextre to the international space station and getting it working. The robot was transported in nine pieces and the software problem emerged as the astronauts assembled it yesterday.

If the problem cannot be fixed, the same astronauts may have to endure another spacewalk to disassemble the robot, which could otherwise be damaged if it remains without power on the outside of the space station.

Mike Suffredini, NASA's space station programme manager, said he was confident the problem could be resolved fairly quickly.

By Dean Goodman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Who wants to bask in the reflected glory of Paris Hilton?

That's the challenge the ubiquitous socialite is throwing out to 20 men and women who will compete in an MTV reality show to be her new "BFF" (best friend forever).

Hilton, 27, unveiled the series, with the working title "Paris Hilton's My New BFF," during a news conference at a luxury home high in the Hollywood Hills on Thursday.

Production on the 10-episode series is slated to begin in Los Angeles at the end of May, with an air date scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2008.

Wannabe members of Hilton's entourage must submit their details to a web site, www.parisbff.com, where online voters will decide their fate. The 20 finalists will move into a house with Hilton, and will learn from the master about "normal girl stuff," like fashion, parties and shopping.

The winner, joining a long list of trusty sidekicks such as Dr. Watson, Tonto and Karl Rove, will get "an all-access pass to the VIP section of the VIP section," according to a statement.

At least until the inevitable celebrity feud flares up, which Hilton joked would "probably" inspire a new reality series. She declined to detail how the winner would be chosen, and what exactly they would win.

What is she looking for in a best friend?

 

"Someone that I can just trust, someone who's not gonna stab me in the back like has happened a lot in this town, someone I can have fun with," said Hilton, who co-created the series with Michael Hirschorn and Stella Stolper, former executives at VH1, the cable channel sibling of MTV.

Of course, Hilton already has a BFF, Nicole Richie, her co-star in the reality series "The Simple Life." Hilton said Richie understands the potential dilution of her BFF status, and is busy with her new baby anyway.

Any male contestants hoping for a BFF-with-benefits arrangement are out of luck. Hilton already has a boyfriend, rocker Benji Madden -- the twin brother of Richie's partner -- and said there would be no hanky-panky on set even if Madden is out of the picture by then.

(Editing by Belinda Goldsmith)

Flickr user Ian Boyd posted this photo of an amusing garage door warning, noting "This was on the old Island 2000 Trust garage up along the Forest Road, sadly now demolished and gone forever." The message reads, "PLEASE DO NOT BLOCK THESE DOORS UNLESS WE SAY 'OH ALRIGHT JUST THIS ONCE THEN.'" Link (Thanks, David!)

I'll admit it, some karaoke singers are worth listening to —from a distance— but even then my inner-sound technician always cries at their awkward mike-handling: and that's where this freestanding microphone would be handy. The Crosley CR25 Talent Show Kit may even add a little old-time radio show class to karaoke with its retro looks, inspired by a 1956 Sears Wishbook. It probably can't turn you into the next Nat King Cole, but it does have microphone, amp and feedback/distortion suppression built in so at least it should sound good. Available soon for $79.95. [Crosley radio via Red ferret]

It's just what you've been waiting for -- a Nokia N95 running Windows Mobile. It looks like the rumors were true after all! What's that? This is not a real phone? It's just an FM radio with a sticker on the screen? Oh bother. Yes folks, thanks to eagle-eyed tipster Eric, you're looking at the next evolution in gadgetry -- the Asaki N95 FM radio. We're not sure what the going price for this is, but we'd imagine slightly less than $779, though the real N95 doesn't come with those totally pimped-out headphones, does it?

The figures are extrapolated from a September 2007 report by the Inspector General of the Department of Justice, which reported that the Terrorist Screening Center had over 700,000 names in its database as of April 2007, and that the list was growing by an average of over 20,000 records per month.

read more | digg story

Here is our exclusive video on the iPhone with hacked 2.0 firmware, running on a T-Mobile network instead of AT&T. Despite what other reports have erroneously stated, this is not a jailbroken iPhone with firmware 2.0, but a completely hacked version of the firmware that allows to run any app and use any carrier you want.

read more | digg story

And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder: One of the four beasts saying: "Come and see." And I saw. And behold, the definitive iPhone knock-off! 99%-exactly like the real thing except for the front and back cameras, and the sign of the Anti-Christ: the inverted Apple!

read more | digg story

Honestly guys, while women can be very complex, most don’t require much to keep them happy. I asked both single and attached women alike, “What does it take to keep you happy in a relationship?” In no particular order, here’s how they answered in the form of ten helpful tips.

read more | digg story

"This isn’t as silly as it seems at first. No, I’m not talking Nibiru or any of that other nonsense (and it is nonsense), I’m talking about an actual planet, Earth-sized or so, that could be orbiting the Sun well beyond Neptune."

read more | digg story

By Paul Hyman

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Some films seem so perfect for
converting to video games that one wonders why that never happened.
Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill," for example.

Or perhaps Frank Miller's "Sin City." Imagine what a savvy publisher
with experience in making great games from movies -- like Electronic
Arts or Activision -- could do if it were able to enlist the images and
voice acting of the 2005 film's considerable talent, including Bruce
Willis, Jessica Alba, Benicio Del Toro, Mickey Rourke and Elijah Wood.

But when the "Sin" game hits store shelves around Christmas 2009,
there will be no stars, no day-and-date marketing with the film's
sequel, "Sin City 2," and the publisher's name on the box -- Red Mile
Entertainment -- will be unknown to even the most hard-core gamers.

Indeed, the fledgling gamemaker has secured the rights not to either
of the movies but to the seven graphic novels that comprised their
source material.

"It's just one of those calls you have to make in the games
industry," says company president and COO Glenn Wong, previously
president of Electronic Arts Canada, arguably the world's largest video
game studio. "We decided that the 'Sin City' graphic novels, with their
dark images and nonlinear stories, would work better as the basis for
an interactive game."

It doesn't hurt, of course, that it's far less expensive to license
the books than the movies, but Wong claims that didn't enter into the
equation. "We wanted to go back to the source material instead of the
filtered version that people saw on the big screen," he says.

Wong recognizes that, in making that call, he forgoes the one-two
marketing punch associated with releasing a game day-and-date with its
cinematic counterpart. After all, a simultaneous release might have
been easily arranged since "Sin City 2" is in preproduction and
scheduled to hit theaters sometime next year. And one of its directors
-- "Sin" creator, author, and artist Frank Miller -- is the game's
licensor.

"We'd like to think that we'll be able to capitalize on whatever
awareness of 'Sin City' is generated by the second film," Wong says.
"But, frankly, I don't even know when that's scheduled to be released."

Wong says he is simply elated that his company was able to secure
the rights to the "Sin" game. After all, Sausalito, Calif.-based Red
Mile Entertainment, which opened its doors in 2006, has only a few
games under its belt, including "Jackass: The Game" and "Crusty Demons:
The Game."

Currently, the "Sin City" game is just six months into production
with a crew of 35 to 50 people at Melbourne, Australia-based developer
Transmission Games (formerly IR Gurus). Its plan is to build the game
on three platforms -- Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii -- using the
Unreal 3 engine.

One thing is for sure. Wong hopes to create a game franchise regardless of how well the first game sells.

"We'd like to finish game No. 1 in a year and a half," he says, "and
then turn out a sequel every other year after that. The beauty of Frank
Miller's work is that it's so rich with so many characters that, once a
gamer gets a real good taste of 'Sin City,' they're not going to say,
'OK, I've seen it all.' They're going to say, 'So when do I get more?'"

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

BAGHDAD -- A roadside bomb ripped into a bus carrying mourners home to the southern city of Basra after attending a funeral in Najaf on Tuesday, killing as many as 16 of them and injuring 13 to 22, police said.

The bombing, part of a wave of violence that killed at least 36 people in Iraq, highlighted the precariousness of recent security gains. The U.S. military has acknowledged a slight increase in bloodshed recently, but says it is too soon to call it a trend.

Major bombings are relatively rare in the overwhelmingly Shiite Muslim south, which has been spared the worst of the Sunni Arab insurgent violence plaguing central and northern Iraq. But Shiite militants periodically clash with U.S.-led forces in the region.

In addition, Shiite factions are locked in a bloody rivalry for power and influence in the oil-rich south.

Iraqi police said Tuesday's blast, on the highway between Nasiriya and Basra, appeared to be aimed at a passing U.S. convoy but missed its target.

The U.S. military later put the toll at only two injured, including an American soldier. The different reports from the Iraqis and Americans could not be immediately reconciled.

Elsewhere in the south, Iraqi security officials said heavy clashes erupted late Monday between their forces and militiamen loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr during raids in two sections of Kut. The fighting continued into Tuesday, killing at least six people and injuring 18, including four policemen, the officials said.

A U.S. special forces unit was ambushed by a large number of fighters when it responded to a request for help from the Iraqis in Kut, the military said in a statement. The unit returned fire and later called in an airstrike on a vehicle from which weapons were seen being distributed to the fighters, the statement said.

Sadr renewed a cease-fire last month, but issued a statement over the weekend authorizing his followers to defend themselves if attacked.

North of the capital, a gunfight Tuesday between police and unknown assailants killed at least nine people in Mosul, the city that U.S. commanders describe as the last urban stronghold of Sunni insurgents loyal to Al Qaeda in Iraq.

In Duluiya, also north of Baghdad, a suicide bomber in an explosives-laden minibus attacked a checkpoint run by policemen and local tribesmen paid by the U.S. military. At least seven Iraqis were killed and 11 injured, the U.S. military said.

alexandra.zavis@latimes.com

Times staff writer Saif Hameed in Baghdad and special correspondents in Baghdad, Hillah, Mosul and Najaf contributed to this report.

The iPhone Dev Team seems to have stumbled across a hidden feature in the next version of the iPhone firmware. The picture is reminiscent of the iPhone SDK "Organizer"
that shows the currently connected iPhone. However, something that's
different from the screenshots that we posted is the "Console," "Crash
Logs," and "Screenshot" tabs at the top of the window.

The
screenshot shows a "Parental Controls" setting inside the "General"
iPhone settings. It looks as though you can enable these parental
controls and turn on or off:

• Playing explicit songs in iPod
• Website control in Safari
• YouTube control
• iTunes Wi-Fi Store control
• AppStore control

According to a recent post on the Modmyifone Forum,
this is a version of the firmware that was distributed with the SDK
(version 1.2) which the forum post seems to believe will be re-issued
as firmware 2.0. The forum post also goes on to say that the firmware
is jailbroken; however, this has not been confirmed.

[via iPhone Dev Team]

An MIT researcher has developed a tool for students learning to play
the drums which can speed up the time it takes for newcomers to pick up
the instrument. The device, a robotic arm designer Graham Grindlay
calls the "Haptic Guidance System" (or HAGUS), uses a drumstick
fastened to a set of motors which a user holds while being led on beat.
A brace holds the arm in place while the machine plays back a
pre-recorded pattern -- in studies, Grindlay found that students with
no drumming experience were able to hit the drum 18 percent more
effectively after using the HAGUS. A spokesman from the Center for
Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford says the work does
a "wonderful job" demonstrating the ability of haptic devices to train
beginning musicians. So... can a Rock Band implementation of this be
far behind?

[Via Digg]

From a fly on sugar to the internal structure of an HIV cell and the trachea from a silkworm, the Wellcome Image Awards 2008 spotlights some of the boldest pictures taken during groundbreaking scientific research

read more | digg story

More than 10,000 skiers took part in the annual Engadin Ski Marathon in Switerland over the weekend. The 42.2km race starts in Maloja and finishes in S-Chanf near the Swiss mountain resort of St. Moritz, featuring some of the country's most amazing scenery.

read more | digg story

An Italian team of archaeologists unearthed the bowl in the 1970s from a burial site in Iran’s Burnt City, but it was only recently that researchers noticed the images on the bowl tell an animated visual story.The oldest cartoon character in the world is a goat leaping to get the leaves on a tree.

read more | digg story

Wikipedia isn't the most accurate source of information and editorial content is monopolized by a group of insular editors who do not often accept the views of others outside of the circle. This extreme example shows how Wikipedia can be destroyed further, if advertising is allowed.

read more | digg story

The sequel could chronologically move forward to either the Battle of Platea (pictured briefly at the end of the film) where the Spartans, at full force, crushed the Persians. The Spartans also played a large role in the Peloponnesian War and even went against, and defeated Athens, on land and at sea.

read more | digg story

Remotely connecting to your parents' computer to show them how to send email or file their taxes is fine if everything's working correctly, but how about when there's some sort of hardware or operating system error? IOGear's PCPortal actually bypasses the issue entirely by being a hardware solution that hooks directly up to an Ethernet port and to the computer you're trying to connect to like a KVM.

This way, you can control the machine from the comfort of your own home, diagnosing problems that you couldn't otherwise manage (if Windows doesn't boot up all the way, for example). It's also quite efficient for fixing machines that do boot up, but have various software glitches that prevent you from remotely tunneling in. The PCPortal costs $499, but if you're frequently administrating other people's machines, or if you need an easy way to get into your own from the outside world, it's a decent investment. [Iogear]

Early this morning on the highway that connects Abu Dhabi and Dubai, around 200 cars were involved in a mass traffic accident that has reportedly left six people dead and hundreds injured. Weather conditions were a factor in the accident, as a thick morning fog apparently reduced vision, which led to motorists driving full speed into the pile up one after another. Because the fog was so thick, people with serious injuries couldn't be flown by helicopter to area hospitals right away and were treated by a pair of doctors and nurses on the scene. Gulfnews is reporting that 25 cars caught on fire, and six full-size busses were involved, as well. Images from the crash scene, which you can view by clicking the source below, are incredible, including the one shown above. Thanks for the tip, Mahdi.
[Source: Gulfnews]

All platforms: Mozilla's pushed out the latest release of the Firefox 3 beta for testers and impatient upgraders. Firefox 3 Beta 4 improvements include a better download manager, smarter location bar auto-complete, speedier performance (twice as fast using Google Apps, says Moz), better memory handling, and an even more native look and feel for Mac, Windows, and Linux users with new icons and toolbars. After the jump, check out the Beta 4 highlights from the release notes.

• New Download Manager: the revised download manager makes it much easier to locate downloaded files, and you can see and search on the name of the website where a file came from. Your active downloads and time remaining are always shown in the status bar as your files download.
• Full page zoom: from the View menu and via keyboard shortcuts, the new zooming feature lets you zoom in and out of entire pages, scaling the layout, text and images, or optionally only the text size. Your settings will be remembered whenever you return to the site.
• Integration with Vista: Firefox now has Vista-specific icons, and uses native user interface widgets in the browser and in web forms.
• Integration with the Mac: the new Firefox theme makes toolbars, icons, and other user interface elements look like a native OS X application. Firefox also uses OS X widgets and spell-checker in web forms and supports Growl for notifications of completed downloads and available updates. A combined back and forward control make it even easier to move between web pages.
• Integration with Linux: Firefox's default icons, buttons, and menu styles now use the native GTK theme.
• Location bar & auto-complete: type in all or part of the title, tag or address of a page to see a list of matches from your history and bookmarks; a new display makes it easier to scan through the matching results and find that page you're looking for. Results are returned according to their frecency (a combination of frequency and recency of visits to that page) ensuring that you're seeing the most relevant matches. An adaptive learning algorithm further tunes the results to your patterns!
• Speed: improvements to our JavaScript engine as well as profile guided optimizations have resulted in significant improvements in performance. Compared to Firefox 2, web applications like Google Mail and Zoho Office run twice as fast in Firefox 3 Beta 4, and the popular SunSpider test from Apple shows improvements over previous releases.
• Memory usage: Several new technologies work together to reduce the amount of memory used by Firefox 3 Beta 4 over a web browsing session. Memory cycles are broken and collected by an automated cycle collector, a new memory allocator reduces fragmentation, hundreds of leaks have been fixed, and caching strategies have been tuned.

Firefox 3 Beta 4 is a free download for testers; it IS a beta so expect possible bugs and weirdness, and the possibility that not all of your extensions will work with it. (Here's a workaround for getting your extensions to work in the Firefox 3 Beta).

Download Firefox 3 Beta 4 [Mozilla]
Firefox 3 Beta 4 Release Notes [Mozilla]
Firefox 3 Beta 4 Review [Mozilla Links]

 

If you drop molten glass into a bucket of water, it will solidify into what's called a "Prince Rupert's Drop." According to this Corning video, the surface of the drop is in a state of great compression, while the interior is in a state of great tension. You can squeeze the bulbous part of the drop with pliers or bang on it with a hammer to no avail. However, if you snap off the hair-thin tail at the end of the drop, it'll shatter into dust. (Via forgetomori)

Set to air April 25th. The build team — Kari, Grant, and Tory — went to Marshall Space Flight Center to use a vacuum chamber there. Looks like they’ll be recreating Dave Scott’s famous feather and hammer drop from Apollo 15, as well as the hoax claim that dry lunar regolith can’t hold a footprint, and how the flag can wave in a vacuum.

read more | digg story

When something is thin enough to fit into an envelope, light enough to sit on your lap for a couple of hours without discomfort and so compact that it doesn't even bulge in an airline seat-back pocket, wouldn't it make sense that one could lose track of such a thing? Yes, it would make sense. Believe me. Because I can't find my MacBook Air.

read more | digg story

I format my Mac once a year, either because it’s clunked up with old .prefs files or because I just feel like performing a zero-out on my hard disk. One good thing about owning a Mac is never having to worry about installing drivers after reformatting. So that’s one problem avoided....

read more | digg story

A machine that controls a novice's drumstick to help them learn how to play could be the first of a string of robotic musical teachers. The device has also been found to cut the time it takes to pick up new rhythms, according to a study.

read more | digg story

 

Firefox with Greasemonkey: Google Reader Filter is a free Greasemonkey user script that takes a list of user-defined keywords and automatically highlights any items in Google Reader whose contents match any word in your matchlist. The script's filtering does not remove posts from Reader, so you won't miss any content—you'll just have your attention drawn more closely to the matching items with the highlighting (though clearly a toggle option to truly filter matches would be useful). Google Reader Filter is free to install, requires Firefox with the Greasemonkey extension. I had mixed results with it, so let's hear how it works for you in the comments.

Google Reader Filter [Userscripts via Google Operating System]

I like to go to the gym about three or four times a week, and I found a great way to motivate myself to go — I keep track of my workout for the day. If I use a machine, I write down how much time I was on it, my distance, my speed, and the calories burned (even though this is probably inaccurate). If I'm lifting weights, I write down each exercise, the amount of weight I lifted, and how many reps I did. Not only does it keep track of my workouts, but when I peruse the journal, I feel a sense of pride when I can actually see all the hard work I accomplished. It also helps me remember to train different parts of my body since I always forget what I did the day before. It's amazing how this little pad of paper allows me to keep up the same intensity the next time I work out. When I'm ready to run faster or longer, or lift a heavier weight, I write that down too, and then I can keep track of my progress.

Fit's Tips: You can download my free FitSugar Fitness Journal. Each sheet maps out a week of fitness, so you can keep all the sheets and when you've collected a bunch, you can look back and be proud of how you're taking such good care of yourself.

It won't be the first collaboration between Adam Sandler and Judd Apatow — that honorable title goes to the hairdresser comedy You Don't Mess With the Zohan, which Apatow apparently wrote — but it will be the first Apatow-directed movie that Adam Sandler stars in.

Everyone's remaining tight-lipped about what, exactly, the project will be about, though so far Sandler's costars will include Apatow's wife Leslie Mann, and Seth Rogen (of course!). The Apatow machine is unstoppable, it seems. In addition to Zohan, he's got his hands in a gazillion other things, including Drillbit Taylor (which he produced), Pineapple Express (which he wrote), Forgetting Sarah Marshall (produced), Step Brothers (produced), The Year One (producing), and Pure Imagination (going to produce). Everyone wants a piece of the Apatow these days.

Source and source

On the few (read: one) occasions on which we've been entrusted with the life of another's child we've never thought "Hey, this is so enjoyable, I would pay to do it on a tiny screen." Babies are noisy, and they smell like milk sick and (often) doody. In fact, "it's like a job that you pay to do" is rarely a recipe for gaming success. The notable exception here is Burgertime, and only because being chased by giant eggs and living to tell about it is the most alive you can feel without the use of crystal meth.
Exhibit 7,324 that no one asks us before they decide to make stuff: Casual PC game Babysitting Mania is coming to the DS. You can play it for free right now on the PC, if you want. Or, you could take the precious life-seconds you would spend doing that, put them in a rocket, and shoot it into the sun. The choice is yours.

The crowd had had enough of Lacy’s interview style (which was also sprinkled with a few mentions of her existing and upcoming book), and turned into a real-life manifestation of a Digg revolt. Once Zuckerberg said that Lacy will need to actually ask some questions during the interview, the audience broke into applause, and just didn’t stop.

read more | digg story

As a web developer, if you’re to be successful, you have to have a constant yearning for learning new things. Here's 20 websites that have broadened my knowledge, expanded my skill set, and improved the quality and efficiency of my web development projects.

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You need to see these - I am excited as HELL for this. I know I may be alone and I know this may create controversy, but it's designed to look like a video game and I think it's going to kick some serious ass. The Wachowski's are back and they're going to blow your mind again with Speed Racer, I guarantee.

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Putting a time stamp on someone's life,...is something that few doctors are willing to do. Instead, they employ much more methodical and caring techniques of breaking the news to terminally ill patients...."Shock or denial is a pretty universal first reaction. Patients say 'it's not me' or 'I'll go to a different doctor.'"

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"A Flipbook on China" celebrates 60 years of observing the changes in China, as documented in Magnum's living archive. More information about the festival can be found on the FotoFest Web site.

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"The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror -- the CIA program to detain and question key terrorist leaders and operatives," - President George W. Bush explains why he vetoed the bill outlawing CIA waterboarding. Well now at lease we can do the same to him.... legally.

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Experience nostalgia by receiving mailings of your old Flickr photos twice a month with Photojojo's Photo Time Capsule. Previously, we suggested that you mail your future self. Instead, receive emails from the past. The tool integrates with your Flickr account and emails you weekly (or twice a month) with photos that you've taken 1 month ago, 3 months ago, 6 months ago, 1 year ago, or two years ago (the time setting is totally customizable). With the Photo Time Capsule, you'll never forget your precious photographs that you took a while ago and you won't have to manually dig into your old pictures to view those precious memories either.

Photo Time Capsule [Photojojo]