Animals That Live Without Oxygen discovered

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Scientists have found the first multicellular animals that apparently live entirely without oxygen. The creatures reside deep in one of the harshest environments on earth: the Mediterranean Ocean's L'Atalante basin, which contains salt brine so dense that it doesn't mix with the oxygen-containing waters above. Previous samples taken from the water and sediments in the basin showed that single-celled life was present, but a new study published this week in BMC Biology has identified multi-cellular animals that apparently live and reproduce in the sediments under the salt brine. Italian and Danish researchers describe three new species of tiny animals called Loricifera.

via ScienceShot: Animals That Live Without Oxygen – ScienceNOW.

Congressman Duncan Blasts “Useless” Air Marshal Service

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We now have approximately 4,000 in the Federal Air Marshals Service, yet they have made an average of just 4.2 arrests a year since 2001. This comes out to an average of about one arrest a year per 1,000 employees.Now, let me make that clear. Their thousands of employees are not making one arrest per year each. They are averaging slightly over four arrests each year by the entire agency. In other words, we are spending approximately $200 million per arrest. Let me repeat that: we are spending approximately $200 million per arrest.

via Duncan Blasts “Useless” Air Marshal Service Congressman John J. Duncan Jr. Serving Tennessee s 2nd District.

Now if they could take a look at what the TSA is doing too!

Why the Google antitrust complaint is not about Microsoft

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This is an interesting read:

It’s about the current EU antitrust complaint filed against Google – not by Microsoft, as it happens. It covers whitelisting of people and Google using its search engine results to push its own services, which is anti-competitive. Specifically two examples are mentioned: on line map services (where MapQuest lost out in searches to Google Maps, even when the term MapQuest was specifically used) and price comparison sites. This tactic could obviously be used to kill off any competitors in any market Google is in, especially if they are then whitelisted, whereby the competitor is not to found in the search engine at all any more, unless through paid exposure using AdWords.

So this is about anit-competitiveness and transparency.

Why the Google antitrust complaint is not about Microsoft • The Register.

Dutch fingerprint database supposedly safe in 3rd party hands

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The current (demissionary) minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin has made himself a total idiot by declaring a database into which he wants to put fingerprints of all the Netherlands ‘safe’. Hasn’t he learnt yet, when it comes to databases, there is no such thing as safe?!

Further, the data will be stored at a third, non-governmental database. Where it will be safe too.

Really.

Idiot.

Minister: database vingerafdrukken is veilig | Webwereld.

EC wants global filter: claims kiddyporn

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That’s how these misused things always start – anti-terrorlaws, jew extermination: no, we just want to do this one little thing. Once the mechanism is in there, well we might just as well increase its functionalities just a little bit – it’s there anyway!

Anyway, the EC wants to implement a technically totally unviable kiddy porn filter over the internet, globally please. Who’s to say it won’t stop midget porn (hey – if you dig it, whatever!) and then get used to stop, say, sites with liberal ideas?

EC stelt Europabreed kinderpornofilter voor | Webwereld.

Full body scanners: fine for us, but not for them

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The BAA employee took a photo of his co-worker, Jo Margetson, when she inadvertently went through a scanner.

“I can't bear to think about the body scanner thing,” she told the Sun. “I'm totally traumatised. I've spoken to the police about it. I'm in too much of a state to go to work.”

BAA said: “We treat any allegations of inappropriate behaviour or misuse of security equipment very seriously and these claims are being investigated thoroughly,” a BAA spokesman said. “If found to be substantiated we will take appropriate action.”

via Airport worker given police warning for ‘misusing’ body scanner | UK news | guardian.co.uk.

Well it’s not a surprise that the thing is used for what it was built. These things are a total scourge on our privacy and it’s ridiculous that these can be used on passengers, especially when they don’t increase passenger safetly at all.

Gerald Blanchard: Masterthief

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This guy started stealing at 6 and never looked back. Banks, jewelry, skimming, scamming, he’s done it all. Using high-tech gadgets and doing parachuting in or using air ducts, he got in anywhere. A gripping read of a real life Pink Panther style master thief, who made a few too many mistakes and got caught.

Art of the Steal: On the Trail of World’s Most Ingenious Thief | Magazine.

Computer Engineer Barbie

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Yup, it finally happened,

Barbie® I Can Be…™ dolls and accessories empower girls to play out different roles and “try on” fabulous careers, including computer engineer, the first Barbie® profession chosen by popular vote! Always a reflection of the times, this digital diva engineers the perfect geek-chic look, with hot pink accessories and sleek gadgets to match. The inspiring set also comes with a special code that unlocks career-themed content online, for even more digital play (how fitting)!

http://shop.mattel.com/product/index.jsp?productId=4032107&cp=3719989.3748552

A school with normal times gets impressive results.

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A school that has allowed its pupils to start the day an hour later says it has seen absenteeism decline.At Monkseaton High School, in North Tyneside, 800 pupils aged 13-19 have started lessons at 10am since October.Early results indicates that general absence has dropped by 8% and persistent absenteeism by 27%.

via BBC News – Lie-in for teenagers has positive results.

Foil impressioning lockpicking

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The way the tool works is that you first take some aluminum foil and make a ‘U shaped’ form using the special tool to do so and make small incisions on pre-determined positions. Next thing you do is put the foil over a special blank that already has the profile of your target lock. The clever thing about this tool is that the ‘U shaped foil tube’ is wrapped around some sort of needle, and the foil can not be pushed in when entering the lock! Once the key is inserted, the needle is taken out from the back of the tool, and the pins are now resting on the foil. Because of the cuts in the foil, each pin will stand on it’s own ‘island’ of foil, and when it is pushed in will not disturb the neighboring pin!

This technique will open most locks and you can buy a kit for around $58,- or a simpler model for $21,-

via Advanced foil impressioning « Blackbag, Barry’s weblog.

Speed Up Windows 7 Taskbar Navigation with a Registry Hack – Windows Tip – Lifehacker

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Launch regedit.exe

HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Explorer AdvancedGo to Edit->New->DWORD 32-bit ValueName the value LastActiveClick

Hit enter to assign the value and change it to 1Restart Explorer and you're good to go.

via Speed Up Windows 7 Taskbar Navigation with a Registry Hack – Windows Tip – Lifehacker.

F-35 price hiked by 90%

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Not only is the F-35 underperforming and overpriced, it’s also not an air dominance fighter. It’s a point defence fighter with the same limitations of the F-16 when it first came out. If you want to play with the big boys, you gotta have a big stick, and the F-35 just isn’t it.
Now it’s flayaway price is estimated at $135m, a lot more than the $60-$90m projected and a whole lot more than a new F-16 or even a latest model F-18.
Dump this programme, get F-22 back on the rails (if you’re American) or buy Eurofighter / Rafale / Gripen (if you’re European).

Last year, the US Air Force reported incremental unit procurement cost to buy one more F-22 in Fiscal 2010, assuming a 20-aircraft multi-year contract. The cost was $138 million.At the time, the F-35 seemed like a bargain by comparison. The official cost estimate, unchanged since 2007, pinned the average procurement cost for the F-35 between $60-$90 million, depending on the variant.Those assumptions for the F-35 now look almost ridiculously rosy. The Department of Defense released a document today revising the F-35 cost estimate by up to nearly 90% [read full story].We now know the F-35 will cost between $114 million to $135 million, adjusted for inflation. That average cost assumes the US Air Force will still buy 1,763 F-35As despite plans to draw-down to a total of 2,000 fighters, including 186 F-22s already on order.

via F-35 sticker shocks the $138 million F-22 – The DEW Line.

US Army takes down CIA / Saudi extremist website

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Showing there is little unity and policy when it comes to cyber warfare in the US, the military took down a website used to gather intelligence on extremists. In the process of doing so they took down around 300 servers around the world and pissed off all the other intelligence gathering agencies that were covertly monitoring the site to gain information on the identities and plans of terrorist extremists.

Dismantling of Saudi-CIA Web site illustrates need for clearer cyberwar policies.

Lost Shakespeare Play?

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On December 1727 an intriguing play called Double Falshood; Or, The Distrest Lovers was presented for production by Lewis Theobald, who had it published in January 1728 after a successful run at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London. The title page to the published version claims that the play was ‘Written Originally by W.SHAKESPEARE’.

Double Falsehood’s plot is a version of the story of Cardenio found in Cervantes’s Don Quixote (1605) as translated by Thomas Shelton, published in 1612 though in circulation earlier. Documentary records testify to the existence of a play, certainly performed in 1613, by John Fletcher and William Shakespeare, probably entitled The History of Cardenio and presumed to have been lost.

Well you can buy it now and decide for yourself if this is a genuine play. There will be much discussion about it now that some major scholars have decided to throw their weight behind it as being true.

A & C BLACK.

A dagger to the CIA

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Opinion piece by a former CIA operative on its current lack of operational capability,

On December 30, in one of the deadliest attacks in CIA history, an Al Qaeda double agent schemed his way onto a U.S. base in Afghanistan and blew himself into the next life, taking seven Americans with him. How could this have happened? Agency veteran Robert Baer explains, offering chilling new details about the attack and a plea to save the dying art of espionage

http://www.gq.com/news-politics/politics/201004/dagger-to-the-cia

End of stealth aircraft

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It used to be that you needed a huge cellphone network to start mapping changes in air currents, but now these guys have developed a sensor that can measure the movement and displacement of air particles using a sensor smaller than a matchstick head!

The Microflown

The Microflown is the worlds first and only MEMS technology based sensor that can measure the acoustic particle velocity. By measuring the temperature difference in the cross section of two extremely thin platinum wires placed in parallel, this extremely fast mass flow sensor is capable of monitoring the movement of air particles. Any sound field is described completely by both the (scalar) value sound pressure and the (vector) value acoustic particle velocity. Understandably, acoustic testing becomes much easier if both acoustic quantities can be measured. But the Microflown sensor platform can also be used to measure:

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structural velocity

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sound pressure

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temperature

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DC flow

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acceleration

via Microflown Technologies – Home.