Radio hams and amateur astronomers around the world spent the weekend bouncing radio conversations off the Moon to one another in commemoration of the Apollo 11 landings 40 years ago, organizers in Australia said Sunday.

Although they had some clear and extensive conversations, they had to be patient. It takes around 2.5 seconds for a radio signal to reach the Moon and bounce back to another part of the Earth, so it took around five seconds to get a reply.

Initiated a few months ago by science buffs in Australia and the United States, 'Moonbounce' was just winding up on Sunday Australian time after a 24-hour special event that organizers hope will become annual.

It brought together hundreds of amateur radio hams around the world, event co-founder Robert Brand told Reuters, some armed with their own radio dishes.

It was timed to coincide with the 40th anniversary next month of the Apollo 11 landings on July 20, 1969. But as the Moon does not orbit directly around the Earth's equator, this was the nearest weekend organizers could arrange for practical reasons.

Among those taking part was Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders, one of the first men to orbit around the Moon, who took a famous photograph of Earth from space now known as "Earthrise."

While most were amateurs, institutions lent equipment to the event, including a 26-meter dish at Mount Pleasant in Tasmania and a 45-meter dish at Stanford University in the United States.

"The signals go up from these dishes in a tight beam to the Moon. They actually hit the ground and at an atomic level 'shake' all the atoms on the surface of the Moon," said Brand.

"It is still taking place as we speak."

Around 1,000 people around the world are thought to have the kind of equipment to do this kind of messaging and Brand, who as a 17-year-old played a minor role in the Apollo missions by helping install telecommunications installations used by NASA in Australia, said the results were remarkably clear.

There was "very little difference quality-wise" to some common radios, he said.

source

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After a 5 1/2-month medical leave, Apple CEO Steve Jobs on Monday resumed control of a company that hasn't skipped a beat in his absence, but faces more challenges than when he left.

Jobs, 54, is still in recovery after a liver transplant in Memphis. Apple representatives said he will split his time between work and home for now.

"He's currently at Apple a few days a week and working from home the remaining days," said Apple spokesman Steve Dowling. "We are very glad to have him back."

Jobs stepped away in mid-January after he reported that his health issues were more complex than first imagined. Nine days earlier, he had attributed weight loss to a hormonal imbalance.

Doctors in Memphis did not say what prompted the surgery but said Jobs' prognosis was excellent. Jobs underwent treatment in 2004 for a rare form of pancreatic cancer, which some medical observers had feared may have spread to Jobs' liver, prompting the transplant.

Jobs' return to active duty is a boost for the company he founded and a positive signal to investors that Apple's strong performance on Wall Street should continue.

"I think this will be big morale boost," said Charles Golvin, an analyst with Forrester Research. "He will light a fire under them. They did a good job without him, but this gives them even more confidence."

Indeed, the company fared well in the hands of Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook, who handled day-to-day operations in Jobs' absence. Apple's stock has jumped 67 percent since Jobs stepped away. The company's revenue and profit in the first quarter of this year grew despite a tough economy that has slowed competitors.

In the past month, Apple updated its MacBook Pro line of notebooks, released new software for the iPhone and iPod Touch and began selling the iPhone 3G S, which moved 1 million units in its first three days.

"It seems like Steve Jobs put the company on autopilot mode," said Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equity Research. "They created good products and put them into the customer's hand."

Apple is, however, dealing with more competition in the smart phone space and tougher times in the PC business than when Jobs left. Since January, Palm released the Palm Pre, a major competitor to the iPhone, while two new devices running Google's Android have been announced. Nokia also released the N97, its first touch-screen smart phone in the United States.

Unit ales of iPods were up just 3 percent in the first quarter, though Apple remains the dominant manufacturer of MP3 players.

Apple's PC growth has halted due to the economy. In the first quarter, Apple PC unit sales fell 3 percent. Average selling prices for PCs have also been falling, putting more price pressure on Apple.

The average selling price for notebooks in the United States fell from $916 in the third quarter of 2008 to $859 in the first quarter of this year, according to IDC. Apple's cheapest laptop is $999.

"If Apple maintains its price points and the industry goes lower, maybe the temptation to buy Macs decreases as a result," said Richard Shim, an analyst with IDC.

The company's overall strong performance in Jobs' absence should ease some concerns about a succession plan for Jobs. Cook appears to be the go-to man for Apple and has proven himself adept at leading the company, not only during this latest stint but also in 2004, when Jobs underwent treatment for cancer.

Leander Kahney, editor of the Cult of Mac blog, said Cook looks to be the heir apparent. But he said he doesn't expect Jobs to relinquish his CEO title for a number of years, provided his health is not an issue.

"I can't see him gracefully stepping aside; it's not in his makeup," Kahney said. "Steve's a control freak. He can't hand over the reins to someone else and watch from sidelines. It would drive him crazy."

Then and now

What has changed since the beginning of this year, when Steve Jobs stepped away from the helm of Apple, and Monday, the day he returned.

Stock price

$85.33 a share (on Jan. 14, the day Jobs disclosed he was taking a medical leave). That compares with $141.97, the price per share on Monday.

PC market

Apple's market share worldwide was at 3.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008, compared with 3.6 percent in the first quarter of 2009. Meanwhile, the average selling price of laptops in the U.S. fell from $878.75 in the fourth quarter to $859.40 in the first quarter.

Smart-phone market

Apple released the iPhone OS 3.0 software update and the iPhone 3G S. Meanwhile, rivals Palm and Nokia released the Pre and N97 respectively while two new Android OS phones were announced.

credited to sfgate.com

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Apple is making a handsome profit on its new phone

Apple has reportedly the world's strongest brand image, yet it also has a reputation for being pricey and marking up its products. Many wonder if such a reputation is deserved, or just rhetoric from opinionated tech observers. Now that the iPhone bill of materials (BOM) for the iPhone 3G S has been divined thanks to an iSuppli tear down, readers can judge for themselves whether Apple is marking up the iPhone 3G S.

The hot new phone's components cost $172.46, for the 16 GB model, according to Andrew Rassweiler, director and principal analyst, teardown services, for iSuppli. The most expensive component is the 16 GB of NAND flash memory, produced by Toshiba and estimated to cost $24/unit. Least expensive is the audio codec chip, which costs a mere $1.15/unit, produced by Cirrus Logic.

The phone costs approximately $6.50 to assemble, bringing the estimate cost to $178.96/phone.

The 16 GB iPhone 3G S costs $599.99 for returning customers with less than a year on their contract, and as little as $199.99 for new customer or returning customers with 2 years on their contract. However, according to reports, Apple sells the iPhones to AT&T at approximately $600 per phone, and the carrier provides the discount. Apple is also rumored to get a small cut of the subscription fees.

States Mr. Rassweiller, "Although the retail price of the 16GB iPhone 3GS is $199, the same as for the 8GB version of the original iPhone 3G, the actual price of the phone paid by the service provider is considerably higher, reflecting the common wireless industry practice of subsidizing the upfront cost of a mobile phone and then making a profit on subscriptions."

At a minimum it appears Apple is making a whopping $422 profit on every $178 (manufacturing cost) phone sold. That incredible profit margin may be cut into a bit by transportation, advertising, and other costs, but likely remains quite impressive at the end of the day. Even better for Apple, it likely enjoys an even larger profit on the $699 32 GB iPhone 3G S, as the only difference is a marginally more expensive (likely $20 or less) NAND chip.

Concludes Mr. Rassweiller, "From a component and design perspective, there's also a great deal of similarity between the 3G and the 3GS. By leveraging this commonality to optimize materials costs, and taking advantage of price erosion in the electronic component marketplace, Apple can provide a higher-performing product with more memory and features at only a slightly higher materials and manufacturing cost."

credited to dailytech.com

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Paris Hilton's Dubai hotel room has been bugged.

The US socialite, who is in the United Arab Emirates filming her latest reality TV show, was reportedly horrified when bodyguards found a recording device hidden in her private suite.

A source working with the 28-year-old star told Britain's Daily Express newspaper: "It was some sort of transmitter by all accounts. We are not sure what the device picked up or whom it was transmitting to. But it did leave Paris very jittery.

"Paris's security has been increased and hotel staff are investigating how the device came to be in her room."

Meanwhile Paris - who is filming a third series of her show My New Best Friend Forever - has denied reports she has been warned by TV producers not to wear a bikini in the conservative Muslim state.

She wrote on her Twitter blog: "One of my friends just called me from back home and asked if I got in trouble for wearing a bikini at the beach here and once again - FALSE.

"Everyone at the beach and pool was wearing swimsuits or bikinis. What do you expect people to wear? It's over 100 degrees out here.

"There's a lot of misconceptions about this place, the dress code isn't as strict as one might think. I love the way they dress. Beautiful."

She also wrote that she has ridden a camel while in the state and is set to go indoor skiing.

credited to stuff.co.nz

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Dozens of holidaymakers returning to Newcastle refused to fly after they were asked to act as human ballast.

A jammed hold door meant luggage could only be loaded into the front of the Thomas Cook plane at Mallorca airport.

Passengers were asked to move seats to distribute the weight, but 71 left the plane, fearing for their safety.

Thomas Cook said it was standard procedure for airlines to ensure cargo and passengers were evenly distributed, and there was no safety risk.

Those who refused to fly on Saturday had to arrange alternative transport for themselves.

Safety concerns

Rowen Laybourne, 17, from Cramlington in Northumberland, was with a group of five teenagers.

She said: "People were refusing to fly.

"They were saying it was not safe enough if we had to move about to balance the plane.

"The pilot came out to speak to us and told us it was perfectly safe.

"When someone asked if the hold door could open when we were in the air at 20,000ft, he couldn't understand and walked away."

Her group were among those who left the plane. They spent the night in the airport before catching another flight.

A Thomas Cook spokeswoman said: "It is standard for all airlines to ensure cargo and passengers are evenly distributed on an aircraft and there will be times when passengers will be asked to move to the front or back of a plane.

"This is a routine industry procedure and poses no safety issue.

"We are disappointed that despite reassurances from the captain and crew, a number of passengers decided not to travel."

credited to bbc.co.uk

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Muhammet Dirlik was knocked down a flight of concrete steps by the vehicle after the driver swerved to avoid a dog in the road. The car then smashed into a shop window just a metre away.

The boy is then seen picking himself up and running off, apparently unhurt.

"I saw my son come towards me crying, but we were not aware he had been hit by the car," said his father, Ibrahim Dirlik.

"We thought he was just scared by the crash. We only realised the next day that the car had hit my son."

The incident was captured on CCTV in the town of Sanliurfa, Turkey.

credited to telegraph.co.uk

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Don't ask Dave Chapman why he climbed into the clothes dryer, it's an answer that eludes even him.

All he will say is the experience that followed won't be repeated.

His experience involves one pair of underpants, a Hoover 5050 ED heavy-duty dryer (with a 5kg load-bearing capability) and Dave.

He had been drinking with a few mates at Waipopo, near Timaru, on Saturday and went to change his clothes. When it came to finding a pair of undies to put on, Dave checked the dryer.

"By that time, I'd had a fair bit to drink; I don't know what flaming possessed me to get in it. I was trying to find these undies when everything just got stuck."

Dave, who still hadn't found the clothes to cover his lower half, managed to fit his head, shoulders and arms into the dryer in his search for appropriate clothing.

"I thought my undies were there, but obviously not."

Wedged in the 30cm-wide opening of the hot, recently used dryer up to his armpits, Dave let out a cry for help. By this stage, the heat from the dried clothes was getting to him. "I was panicking because there was no air," he said.

Thrashing around in a desperate bid to escape, Dave found his situation get worse. The dryer, which sat on another one, fell to the floor, on top of him. "Somehow I managed to move the whole thing. I fell over with it on my head."

His friends lifted the device back to its resting place, with Dave still stuck inside. Soon after they were joined by ambulance staff, a female police officer and the Washdyke and Temuka fire brigades.

A naked Dave found his nether regions exposed to the world. "They told me to remain calm and all that stuff. I said: 'Well you get in here'."

The fire crews took parts off the dryer, lifted Dave horizontally, and pulled him from his prison. He's still hurting a bit, with grazes and bruises, but he's glad to be free.

The dryer is back together, Dave is recovering and the undies . . . well, they were never there - the clothes in the dryer weren't his.

credited to stuff.co.nz

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Microsoft on Tuesday released a beta version of its new free anti-virus offering, Microsoft Security Essentials (a.k.a "Morro"). My review, in short: the program is a fast, easy to use and unobtrusive new addition to the stable of free anti-virus options available today.

MSE is basically the next generation of Microsoft's Windows Live Onecare anti-virus and anti-spyware service, but without all of the extras, such as a firewall, data backup solution and restore or PC performance tuning (Microsoft announced in Nov. 2008 that it would stop selling Onecare through its retail channels at the end of June 2009).

The toughest part was getting the program installed. MSE can run on Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 (both 32-bit and 64-bit versions), but the program failed to install on an XP Pro system I tried to use as my initial test machine -- leaving me with nothing more than a failure message and cryptic error code that didn't turn up anything in an online search.

Fortunately, it installed without issue on my Windows 7 Beta system. Interested users should note that installing MSE requires that the would-be user's system passes Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage anti-piracy tool, which checks to make sure it is being installed on a licensed version of Windows. Would-be users also will need to register for or already have a free Windows Live (or Hotmail) account in order to download the program.

After installation, MSE spends a couple of minutes downloading additional files, and then prompts the user to perform a "Quick Scan." True to its name, that scan took less than 10 minutes on my test system. A full scan, however, took about 45 minutes on a relatively new install of Windows 7.

Anti-virus products are notorious for sucking up system resources, but you'd be forgiven for forgetting this program is even running. It barely used more than 4 MB of system memory for the entire time I tested it, including during scans.

By default, MSE scans archived files (.zip, e.g.), and creates a system restore point before deleting any files that set off alarms. The one scanning option not checked by default is to scan removable drives -- such as USB drives -- for viruses. But users can enable this option.

The program is not just an on-demand scanner: It includes real-time protection, which Microsoft says "alerts you when viruses, spyware and other potentially unwanted software attempts to install itself or run on your computer."

In addition, MSE monitors file and program activity on your computer, and automatically scans all downloaded files and attachments. If it finds something, it will ask you what to do with the suspect file, and if the user takes no action after 10 minutes, Microsoft will decide what to do with the file(s) according to its default actions. Out of the box, it schedules a scan every Sunday at 2:00 a.m., but only if the PC is idle at that time.

A great deal has been written so far about the potential for MSE to unseat established giants in the anti-virus industry. It's too soon to say whether that will happen, or how Microsoft's new offering will measure up in tests against real-life malicious software, tests that are beyond the scope of this review.

Personally, I doubt whether MSE will have much of an impact on the anti-virus market as a whole. If anti-virus industry players fall by the wayside in the coming years, it will be because they either get gobbled up by their (non-Microsoft) competitors, or they fail to adapt to the latest threats.

Each time the issue of Microsoft throwing its weight around in the security space arises, it invariably raises the same issues of trust, privacy and efficacy. Allow me to address a few of the common themes, in the context of MSE:

Microsoft made the operating system, so it's probably best equipped to produce software capable of defending its weaknesses: The truth is, Microsoft is continually defending the weaknesses in Windows. Every month, it ships new patches to fix security and stability problems in its software that it didn't know about until bad guys or researchers unearthed them and proved they were exploitable. What's more, Microsoft is in no more advantageous a position vis-a-vis other anti-virus makers to tell which tricks the bad guys will pull out of their hats next.

Microsoft is responsible for the same buggy software that lets the bad guys break in, so why would you trust them to also do a good job defending your PC against malware?: This is a fair question, but the folks asking this very question probably will never install this software anyway.

And, while I don't believe Microsoft has the time or the inclination to go rooting through users' systems for personal information, the disclaimer for the default "Basic membership" in Microsoft SpyNet that ships with MSE also isn't likely to reassure those who doubt the company's intentions. It reads:

"Send basic information to Microsoft about software that Microsoft Security Essentials detects, including where the software came from, the actions that you apply or that Microsoft Security Essentials applies automatically, and whether the actions were successful. In some instances, personal information might unintentionally be sent to Microsoft. However, Microsoft will not use this information to identify you or to contact you."

Microsoft is only offering this product so that it can gain a foothold in the security software market, after which time it will start charging people to protect their computers whilst strong-arming its competition: Microsoft has said it plans to continue offering MSE for free. And for all of the reasons stated above, I don't believe Microsoft's offering of a free anti-virus product is going to steal too many paying customers away from other products. After all, there are plenty of other free anti-virus products available, including AVAST! Home Edition, Avira's AntiVir, AVG Free, ClamWin, PCTools, and Panda's new Cloud Antivirus offering, to name but a few.

I suspect Microsoft is offering this software for reasons part public relations and part self-preservation: Redmond knows that anything it can do to ensure that there are fewer malware-infested PCs out there is a good thing. And let's face it, for whatever reason -- even with the impressive number of free anti-virus offerings out there already -- a dangerous number of Windows users continue to use the operating system without any kind of anti-virus software installed. At least with its brand recognition, Microsoft has a good chance of changing that reality to some degree.

One final note, if you're interested in trying out this software, you probably want to move pretty quickly. According to ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft intends to make this beta available only to the first 75,000 downloaders in the United States, Brazil or Israel.

credited to washingtonpost.com

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Chris Richardson, headmaster of Kings of Wessex School in Cheddar, Somerset, has told all 1,200 pupils that they face detention if caught 'snogging'.

However, parents at the school for 13 to 18-year-olds have criticised the rule, claiming that kissing is an integral part of teenage life.

The move follows a string of disciplinary incidents at the school, including the case of a pupil who was threatened with expulsion after being caught eating an apple on school tennis courts.

Children have also been given detention in the past for undoing shirt top buttons, taking off blazers on hot days or wearing the wrong shade of black trousers.

Complaining about the kissing ban, one parent of a pupil at the Church of England Foundation School told The Sun: "Snogging is part of teenage life.

"Most schools probably frown on pupils kissing. But actually banning it under threat of punishment is going a step too far."

Mr Richardson was unavailable to comment on the matter.

The Kings of Wessex School is also a Specialist Technology College and has received government awards for sustained improvement in exam results over recent years.

Two years ago, pupil Tom Bosley, 16, was almost expelled after refusing to accept detention for eating an apple on a tennis court, where food is banned.

In 2003, 22 children were accused of breaching the uniform code by wearing plain supermarket-bought blazers instead of more expensive ones from the school outfitters. Parents formed a protest group – branding the strictness "Dickensian".

Writing on the school's website, Mr Richardson says: "We are a forward-thinking school but we still believe in traditional values."

credited to telegraph.co.uk

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Orlando Bloom's mother is selling clothes, slippers and even a wet suit worn by the actor during filming for Lord of the Rings, in a bid to clear out his room before she moves house.

Sonia Copeland-Bloom has also included a number of costumes worn by her son while filming the trilogy.

She said he doesn't mind his unwanted possessions being sold off, as long as the proceeds go to charity.

"I have spoken to Orlando who is quite happy for me to get as much as I can for charity," said Mrs Copeland-Bllom, who lives in Kent.

"There are some real collector's items among them and they will all be authenticated by me by letter."

Among them is a bodyline wet suit used by Orlando, 32, when he filmed a scene with Elijah Wood in The Return of the King and a poster signed by the entire cast.

A pair of Moroccan slippers and boots he wore in The Kingdom of Heaven could also entice trilogy collectors.

Fans of Bloom – who now lives in west London – can also get their hands on more personal items such as the badminton and tennis racquets he used as a kid.

Gucci shoes, Puma trainers, polo shirts and a hooded waterproof Gap jacket belonging to the star will also be auctioned.

"We are inviting people to send us bids of which the top ones will be invited to see the items before submitting a further sealed bid," said Mrs Copeland-Bloom.

She said the money raised will be divided between four charities, UNESCO, the New Marlow Theatre, cancer charity Odyssey and the UKC Music Scholarships.

To make a bid contact scjcl@btinternet.com

credited to telegraph.co.uk

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A Florida city is cleaning up with a new dress code that requires city workers to wear underwear and use deodorant.

The city council in Brooksville north of Tampa recently approved a dress code that instructs employees to observe "strict personal hygiene."

It also prohibits exposed underwear, clothing with foul language, "sexually provocative" clothes and piercings anywhere except the ears.

Repeat offenders can be fired.

The city council approved the dress code 4-1 as part of a wider effort to update existing policies and ordinances.

The one vote in opposition came from Mayor Joe Bernadini. He said the underwear edict "takes away freedom of choice."

credited to stuff.co.nz

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Mexico's navy has seized more than a tonne of cocaine stuffed inside frozen sharks, authorities said.

Armed and masked navy officers cut open more than 20 shark carcasses filled with slabs of cocaine after checking a container ship in the southern Mexican state of Yucatan.

X-ray machines and sniffer dogs helped uncover the drugs, said Eduardo Villa, a commander in the Mexican navy. "Those in charge of the shipment said it was a conserving agent but after checks we confirmed it was cocaine," he said.

Drug gangs have been forced to develop increasingly elaborate ways to conceal narcotics bound for the United States - in sealed beer cans, religious statues and furniture.

President Felipe Calderon has sent 45,000 troops and federal police across Mexico to try to crush powerful smuggling cartels moving South American drugs north. But traffickers armed with a huge arsenal of grenades and automatic weapons are far from defeated, worrying Washington as violence spills over into US border states like Arizona.

Some 2,750 people have died in drug violence in Mexico this year, a pace similar to that of 2008, when 6,300 were killed.

Led by Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, smugglers from the Pacific state of Sinaloa are fighting a turf war with rivals. Guzman seeks to control Mexican and Central American smuggling routes into the United States.

credited to telegraph.co.uk

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As international media outlets are being pushed off the streets of Tehran, the burden of reporting on Iran's post-election crisis is falling increasingly on online channels ranging from blogs and video sites to Twitter and Facebook.

The Iranian government raised the stakes in the Internet battle on Wednesday by spreading the word that online users could face prosecution and even execution for "incitement."

The online showdown paralleled the political showdown playing out offline: The opposition candidate in the country's disputed presidential election, Mir Hossein Mousavi, called for a fresh round of mass rallies on Thursday, despite the government's crackdown. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government accused Western countries of "intolerable" interference in Iran's internal politics. And Iran's supreme cleric, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was expected to lay out his plan for easing the crisis during Friday prayers.

The potential options include a partial or full recount of the votes from Sunday's election, which had Ahmadinejad winning in a landslide. That outcome sparked waves of protests from Mousavi and his supporters, who had claimed victory and accused the government of vote fraud.

Amid the political maneuvering, a high-tech, international cat-and-mouse game was playing out online:

• Iranian activists passed along reports about rallies and casualties anonymously via proxy Web servers set up abroad. "It's absolutely crucial for people to be able to use these Web sites, because otherwise a lot of the news may not have gotten out," an Iranian student who gave his name only as Sanaz told NBC News.
• The Iranian government reportedly targeted the protective Internet addresses, or IP addresses, for network attacks. "Do not publish proxy IPs!" Twitter users warned each other in a flurry of messages. Iran's mobile phone and Internet networks showed signs of a slowdown, which may be part of a strategy to reduce the information flow.
• The opposition's supporters hit back by blocking the government's own Internet addresses from carrying out attacks.

The Twitter social-networking service — which lets users around the world post 140-character updates via the Web, mobile phones or specialized computer applications — is taking center stage in the election's aftermath. But Abbas Milani, director of Stanford University's Iranian studies program, noted that Iranians had been using social networking tools, blogs, cell phones and text messaging long before the current crisis.

"What we have here is a network that has been long established for various uses," Milani said. "People have been using this for [organizing] everything from poetry readings to underground rock music. That's just one step away from using it for political purposes. Now it's becoming a reality."

Wired Iran

Milani said that Iran ranks high on the list in bloggers per capita, perhaps at the top. "It is a Weblogging nation, with an estimated 18 million people who use the Internet," he said.

Iranians have also embraced mobile phones in recent years, said M. Rahim Shayegan, an expert on Iranian language and culture at the University of California at Los Angeles. "Since 60 percent of the Iranian population is age 30 and younger, they're not only in possession of a cell phone, but are also aware of how these [various] technologies work," he said.

"Everyone is a reporter," Shayegan said.

An Iranian blogger told msnbc.com in an e-mail that Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and other Web sites are filtered by the government, "but we use anti-filters and proxies to access this Web world." (The blogger's name and Web address are being withheld to protect his identity.)

If the Iranian opposition's supporters are unusually savvy about online communication, so are Iranian government agencies. Over the past couple of days, there have been increasing reports about government agents masquerading online as opposition activists or foreign journalists. That has sparked the rise of Web sites that list the Twitter usernames and Web addresses of suspected spies.

Some Iranians have reported receiving automated phone calls, apparently placed randomly, warning them that the authorities knew what they were up to and would take action. Because of all the anonymity, and because of the official clampdown on reporting, many of the reports being distributed online — for example, about violent clashes or high-profile arrests — were difficult to verify.

Authorities forbade foreign journalists from filming opposition-led protests and pressed them to leave when their visas expired. At the same time, they allowed somewhat more open coverage of the demonstrations by Iranian media. Photographs released by the pro-government Fars News Agency showed the streets of Tehran filled with Mousavi's supporters. (However, another photograph, purportedly printed in a pro-government newspaper, appeared to have been altered to inflate the size of a pro-Ahmadinejad demonstration.)

What next?

The key question is, where is all this going? There are already signs that the government's clampdown is having an effect on the so-called "Twitter Revolution," and a group of activists at the University of Chicago have already set up a fax-to-Web service in case Iran's online links to the outside world are cut off completely.

"The government is trying to do everything it can to curtail the free dissemination of information, and in fact, this is one of the most important issues that large percentages of the people, including people within the established revolutionary government, do not want to happen," said Hossein Ziai, director of Iranian studies at UCLA.

Stanford's Milani said he doubted that government officials could put a complete Internet cutoff into effect. "They might succeed in suppressing the movement, but they won't succeed in dismantling this. They need the Internet as much for their own work as the people do for theirs," he said.

But high-tech communication links provide no guarantee that free expression will remain free — or that the world will remain interested in the outcome.

"The bottom line is that these things are transitory," said Hanson Hosein, a former Middle East correspondent for NBC News who now heads the University of Washington's digital media program and is monitoring Iran's post-election crisis. "They're used for the moment, and they create strong passion, but the passion tends to dissipate once the goal is reached or not reached. ... That's the nature of social media."

In fact, there's a danger in giving too much emphasis to the role played by online media in Iran's political crisis, said Gaurav Mishra, co-founder of 20:20 Web Tech, a social media research and analytics company.

"Calling what's happening in Iran a 'Twitter Revolution' is not only distracting but also dangerous," he wrote on his blog, "because it reduces a legitimate broad-based grassroots movement to what's quickly becoming a cliche."

credited to msnbc.msn.com

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Alaska's Rat Island is finally rat-free, 229 years after a Japanese shipwreck spilled rampaging rodents onto the remote Aleutian island, decimating the local bird population.

After dropping poison onto the island from helicopter-hoisted buckets for a week and a half last autumn, there are no signs of living rats and some birds have returned, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Rats have ruled the island since 1780, when they jumped off a sinking Japanese ship and terrorized all but the largest birds on the island. The incident introduced the non-native Norway rat -- also known as the brown rat -- to Alaska.

The $2.5 million Rat Island eradication project, a joint effort between the U.S. federal government, the Nature Conservancy and Island Conservation, is one of the world's most ambitious attempts to remove destructive alien species from an island.

Now there are signs that several species of birds, including Aleutian cackling geese, ptarmigan, peregrine falcons and black oystercatchers, are starting to nest again on the 10-square-mile (26-sq-km) island.

It is too soon to say that Rat Island is definitively rat-free, however. That can only be established after at least two years of monitoring, said Bruce Woods, a spokesman for the Fish and Wildlife Service in Anchorage.

"We don't know that there's not a couple of happy rats hiding away that are going to spring out and repopulate the island," he said.

credited to newsdaily.com

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Campers in the Lake District were treated to a spectacular light show from a string of glowing orbs which flew in formation across the night sky.

It is the latest in a series of sightings which has baffled onlookers and excited UFO spotters across the UK.

The lights were seen above Ullswater on Saturday night over the Park Foot campsite.

People rushed out of their tents to stand and watch in awe as the lights darted back and forth.

They weaved in and out of one another and appeared to fade and then light up again as they soared through a clear sky.

Camper Paul Haigh, 28, of Darlington, said: "Most people had turned in for the night but we were woken by a commotion.

"Someone had spotted something and dashed out to get a better look.

"Soon everyone was outside their tents and looking up into the sky, it was like a scene from Close Encounters.

"The lights were amazing and seemed to fly in formation, they were darting around, fading an lighting up again.

"There was ever more than six in the sky at any one time, but as one faded another lit up, it was a really weird spectacle.

"There were various theories as to what they were, someone said Chinese lanterns, but they seemed much too big and moving too fast.

"They looked as though they were being propelled under their own power rather than being blown by the wind, it was a still night."

Lucy Gray, 26, of Leeds, said: "They seemed to be dancing around in the sky, not just racing straight across it like clouds.

"They were moving in formation, keeping a regular distance apart and they'd all shift around at the same time.

"It's the weirdest thing I've ever seen and I can't explain it, unless they were aircraft on a training exercise."

Similar lights in recent weeks have been found to be Chinese lanterns, often released during Summer weddings.

credited to telegraph.co.uk

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DoCS has admitted it failed to make any contact with the family of a 12-year-old girl who fell pregnant to her 15-year-old live-in boyfriend.

This is despite serious concerns being raised by the girl’s father.

The girl had shared a bed with the father of her unborn child from the age of 11 after her mother allowed the boy to move into their home.

"We did follow up on the concerns but we were unable to confirm the allegations," DoCS Deputy Director General Annette Gallard said.

"We were doing all we could but unfortunately we were not able to make contact with the girl or her family."

On June 3, independent Dubbo MP Dawn Fardell told parliament the girl's father had discovered her pregnancy after he had been called in to take care of her because her mother was in a mental health unit.

Community services minister Linda Burney's admitted major mistakes were made by her department.

"It is true in my view that DoCS should have intervened more strenuously than what they did," Ms Burney said on Tuesday.

Opposition community services spokeswoman Pru Goward blamed DoCS' refusal to call on the help of community organisations for the girl's plight.

"If you are a local community group you know your local organisations that can help, you can ring the local school, you can ring the local doctor, you know who will be able to assist and reach that girl," she said.

"It is very difficult to do that when you are a government department sitting on the outside."

credited to livenews.com.au

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AT&T and Best Buy have reportedly exhausted their pre-order allotments of the i-Phone 3G S. The long-awaited phone is expected to be available in stores on Friday, June 19. However, pre-orders placed after June 13 could take up to two weeks to arrive at their destination.

Although Apple experienced an inventory shortage after launching the iPhone 3G in 2008, Technology Business Research analyst Ezra Gottheil doubts that Club Cupertino will face similar problems with the 3G S.

"I wouldn't expect the kind of inventory problems Apple had last year," Gottheil told ComputerWorld. According to Gottheil, the 3G S is unlikely to match the sales figures of the original 3G. Indeed, Apple claimed to have sold one million units over a three-day period following the July launch of the shiny device.

The iPhone 3G S is priced at $200 for a 16GB model and $300 for the 32GB version. The 3G S - which offers improved performance along with longer battery life - supports OpenGL ES 2.0 and utilizes 7.2 Mbps HSDPA to achieve faster networking speeds.

As TG Daily previously reported, Apple may have "accidentally" obscured the true cost of its iPhone 3G S, as the above-mentioned price points are applicable only to new and qualifying customers. Indeed, current iPhone 3G owners will be forced to cough up $600 for a new 16GB 3G S and $700 for the 32GB model.

Although alternative upgrade pricing is reportedly available at $399 and $499, AT&T can be expected to charge a $175 fee for the cancellation of active iPhone contracts. The company has also stipulated a 90 day waiting period before the initiation of a new contract.

In addition, MMS support will be available only in late summer, while 3G S owners will have to wait until the latter part of 2009 for tethering abilities. Similarly, the iPhone 3G S is capable of reaching speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps, but the required HSDPA technology will only be fully available in 2011.

credited to tgdaily.com

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A 1979 Volkswagen Golf bought for £50 is now allegedly faster than a Bugatti Veyron supercar following a £60,000 facelift.

Father-of-three Andy Waite, 42, who owns a bodyshop near Newmarket, Suffolk, bought the Mk1 1.5 litre Golf for £50, nearly £900,000 less than the price of the Bugatti, the world's most expensive car.

But after he modified the car to include a custom-built turbocharged engine, the Golf can hit speeds of 0-60mph in just 2.36 seconds - a tenth faster than the Veyron.

The Golf, with a 700bhp and 1850cc turbocharged engine has a top speed of 180mph and can also beat the Bugatti in a quarter-mile sprint.

"I took the chassis and shredded it up to make an absolute beast. The engine is custom-made and it has a roll cage like rally cars," said Mr Waite, of Fordham Cambs.

He is leading the Eurosport Compact Chassis drag race at the Santa Pod raceway in Northamptonshire.

"The tinkering's only just begun. I want to do a quarter mile in nine seconds," he said.

"It drives like a normal road car at low speeds but when I put it on the drag track you realise you have created a monster."

But he conceded: "The biggest problem is that once you get over 160 you can only drive it in a straight line because the steering goes wobbly."

credited to telegraph.co.uk

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A spoof video depicting Gordon Brown as Adolf Hitler in the film 'Downfall' has become a YouTube hit.

The clip called 'Brownfall' shows the Prime Minister as Hitler with a running commentary to his reaction to the European Election results, Labour's worst defeat in 99 years.

In the video, which contains some foul language, Brown is told that "The BNP, UKIP, even the Greens did better than New Labour".

The Prime Minister replies: "There is some mistake, I'll phone Simon Cowell."

He is then told: "Cowell has given his full backing to the Bouffant Popular Front. Even Susan Boyle say's you've got no talent"

The four minute YouTube video is the latest parody of the 2004 Oscar nominated German film 'Downfall', depicting the final twelve days of Adolf Hitler in his Berlin bunker and Nazi Germany in 1945, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel.

The 'Brownfall' video has attracted attention in political blogs and has now gone viral, attracting thousands of hits.

Brown is heard losing his temper over the MPs expenses row.

"Claiming expense for bog seats and croquet mallets" he shouts.

"Jack Straw's leather posing pouch. No wonder we're ------" he says, adding that this is behaviour for the Conservatives not Labour, who should be "fighting the class war" not "swanning about like fairies on -------- yachts".

Labour suffered the worst defeat in its history in the European elections as nearly 1.5 million of its previous backers refused to turn out for Gordon Brown's party.

The full scale of Labour's electoral disaster became clear with the final results, published on Tuesday morning.

Third overall behind the Tories and the UK Independence, Labour was defeated in many of its traditional heartlands, and beaten into fourth and even fifth place in many parts of the country.

Labour took 15.7 per cent of the votes cast, its worst ever showing in a national election.

credited to telegraph.co.uk

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Our solar system has a potentially violent future. New computer simulations reveal a slight chance that a disruption of planetary orbits could lead to a collision of Earth with Mercury, Mars or Venus in the next few billion years.

Despite its diminutive size, Mercury poses the greatest risk to the solar system's order. Results of the computer model show a roughly 1 percent chance that the elongation of Mercury's orbit will increase to the point where the planet's path around the sun crosses that of Venus. That's when planetary pandemonium would ensue, the researchers find, and Mercury could be ejected from the solar system, or collide with the sun or a neighboring planet, such as Earth.

The potential smash-ups, however remote, are detailed in the June 11 issue of the journal Nature.

"I see the results as a case of the glass being 99 percent full and 1 percent empty," said Gregory Laughlin of the University of California, Santa Cruz. "While it's possible that a collision could occur billions of years from now, it's actually very unlikely." Laughlin was not involved in the current study but wrote an accompanying analysis of the research in Nature.

The researchers, Jacques Laskar and Mickael Gastineau of the Paris Observatory, ran computer simulations involving 2,501 scenarios with different planetary orbits.

While most of the outcomes don't involve any crashes, about 25 led to a large disruption of Mercury's orbit. If the increase in elongation of Mercury's orbit results in its collision with the sun or with Venus, the simulations showed the rest of the solar system wouldn't be affected much.

But in some less likely scenarios, the change to Mercury's orbit leads to a total destabilization of the inner solar system (the terrestrial planets) in about 3.3 billion years, possibly triggering collisions of Mercury, Mars or Venus with Earth.

"The most surprising outcome is the destabilization of the orbit of Earth and Venus," Laskar said during a telephone interview.

The result is a Venus-Earth bang-up.

"You first need Mercury to be destabilized by gravitational interaction with Jupiter," Laskar said. "Then this may destabilize Mars, which then can come very close to the Earth. Only then can you have destabilization of Venus' orbit and a collision with the Earth."

When the researchers looked at different cases involving this close approach of Mars and Earth, they found that five set-ups would lead to Mars being flung out of the solar system. And in nearly 200 of the cases, two celestial bodies will collide — 48 of which involve Earth.

Close encounters

While planet orbits might seem stable today, they aren't. And over billions of years, they are less so. Basically, the planets can perturb one another through gravitational interactions. Astronomers say that in the distant past, some of the planets of our solar system could have been on significantly different orbits and migrated to their present locations.

And as the sun ages, it is expected to swell and lose mass; previous studies have shown that could have significant effects on the planets in the next 7 billion years or so. Earth might be vaporized when this happens, or it might — with a gravitational assist from a passing star — be booted right out of the solar system. A study in 2001 by Laughlin, then at NASA, and Fred Adams of the University of Michigan put the odds of the Earth being ejected at one-in-100,000.

Meanwhile, as planets move around, close encounters (especially with larger worlds like Jupiter) could fling them on wildly new trajectories.

Evidence for such melees has been found in exoplanetary systems, including one in which the object 2M1207B may have formed from the collision and merger of two planets. Our own moon was created when a Mars-sized object hit Earth about 4 billion years ago, theorists figure.

The new model results provide the strongest evidence to date of the solar system's future in this regard. "These are the first calculations that really answer the question of the long-term stability of the solar system in a truly definitive way," Laughlin told SPACE.com.

That's because Laskar and Gastineau's model relies on non-averaged equations and accounts for general relativity.

Previous models were based on averaged equations for planetary motion and didn't include the effects of general relativity. When considering planets that are about to collide, such equations don't work well to make accurate predictions. And it turns out general relativity, or the effect of gravity on time and space, does play a role in the crash scenarios.

Here's how: "Mercury's orbit is a slightly elongated ellipse. The sun lies at one of the foci of the ellipse, not at the center," Laughlin said. "Over long periods of time (of the order 100,000 years), the orientation of Mercury's orbit rotates like a clock hand. General Relativity acts to speed up this clock-hand-like rotation, and this decreases the odds that Jupiter can drive large changes in Mercury's orbit."

credited to msnbc.msn.com

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Children in India have been captured on camera as they train to become snake charmers.Children in India have been captured on camera as they train to become snake charmers.

Sitting less than a metre away from a poisonous cobra, the children show no signs of fear and do not flinch when faced with one of the deadly snakes.

Children in India's 600-strong Vadi tribe are first introduced to snakes at the age of two.

All Vadi children complete a ten-year initiation ritual that culminates in the boys becoming fully-fledged performing snake charmers.

The act of snake charming with a traditional flute is the role of the men, while the Vadi women care for the snakes and handle them when their husbands or brothers are not around.

"The training begins at two, the children then are then taught the ancient ways of snake charming until they are ready to take up their roles in our community," says chief snake charmer Babanath Mithunath Madari, 60.

"At twelve the children will know everything that they can know about snakes. They are then ready to continue the traditions of the Vadi tribe which can be stretched back over 1,000 years to India's great Rajas (kings)."

The nomadic Vadi tribe, which lives in the south of the Indian state of Gujarat, take great pride in their association with the deadly snakes.

Never staying in one place for more than six months, the Vadi have an almost mythical attachment to snakes and especially cobras.

"At night, as we sit around our huts in the open desert and explain to the pact that our descendants made with Naga, the snake god," says Madari.

"We explain to the children how we only take a snake away from its natural habitat for a maximum of seven months. Any more is disrespectful to the snake and especially after the charmer and snake have worked together so closely and so intimately. Both are trusting their lives to the other one."

The cobras are fed a herbal mixture which Madari says renders the snake's deadly poison useless.

"We do not cut the fangs off the snakes as that would be cruel," says the tribal chief. "We do not harm them because they are like children to us. In all my years with snakes, from my childhood to now, I have only heard of one man to have been bitten.

"This was because he kept the snake longer than seven months."

Since snake charming was made illegal in 1991, the Vadi have come under huge pressure from the state and national governments of India.

"The police routinely search us and strip us of our snakes whenever we cross their paths," explains Madari.

"We live 25km away from the town of Rajkot at the moment, and every time we try to enter the village for food or even bottle of water, the villagers chase us away.

"This upsets me greatly because this village is the birthplace of the father of our nation Gandhi. Would he stop us from continuing our traditions? The rich of India have no time for the poor."

source

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Microsoft is taking heat for a feature in its new Bing search engine that allows users to watch full-motion snippets of porn videos—China and certain Muslim countries have disabled the function—but the software maker is emphasizing that Bing also includes tools that allow users to turn off anything they find offensive.

"There are several preventive features incorporated into Bing to help block this type of material," a Microsoft spokesman said in an email to InformationWeek on Tuesday.

Most basically, Bing incorporates a filter called SafeSearch. If it's set to "strict", SafeSearch will prevent any explicit images from turning up in a search.

SafeSearch is set to strict by default. "This is a bit more of a conservative approach than others in the industry," said Bing general manager Mike Nichols, in a recent blog post.

"If you set SafeSearch to strict, you will not see any explicit text, image or video content. If you turn SafeSearch off—which requires you to change the setting and then click again to acknowledge that you are over 18, then explicit content may appear," wrote Nichols.

Microsoft has also added a tool that lets network managers enforce the SafeSearch mode at the network level. Add "&adlt=strict" to the end of a query "and no matter what the settings are for that session, it will return results as if SafeSearch was set to strict," said Nichols.

Nichols said Microsoft may introduce some other tools that help Bing users block explicit content. "We think our current search safety settings are solid but at Microsoft we are always working on pushing this stuff farther," said Nichols.

Microsoft has good reason to beef up Bing's safety features. The fact that it displays video content without redirecting users to the original source could expose the company to copyright suits. Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo have been sued in the past by publishers of adult-themed products over image search results that display still photos from their products.

Microsoft is looking to make a bigger splash in the search market. Through the first nine months of 2008 the company committed more than $1.5 billion to acquiring search, or search-driven businesses—including a $1.3 billion buyout of enterprise specialists Fast Search & Transfer.

Redmond is hoping to catch up to Google in search market share. But it's got its work cut out. Google presently controls about 64% of the U.S. search market, while Microsoft owns only about 8% of the market, according to researchers at comScore. Yahoo, the number two player, holds 21% of the market.

source

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Nothing compares to the anticipation of an unseen drop, the whirl of a sudden spin or an unexpected plummet from a too-tall tower … a beating heart … sweaty palms … a dry mouth. People love fear-and roller coasters deliver it.

Coasters have fascinated the world since their inception in the 1800s and now more than ever thrill-seeking globe-trotters are seeking these experiences when they travel. Here are seven of the best roller coasters in the world. Look ‘em up, track ‘em down and give ‘em a whirl.

Eejanaika in Fujiyoshida, Japan

Forget about 3-D … that is for sissies. The Eejanaika roller coaster, pronounced “ee ja nai ka,” and meaning, “ain’t it great?” in Japanese, was introduced in 2006 as part of Fuji-Q Highland’s coaster collection and is the second fourth-dimension roller coaster in the world. Eejanaika features a 249-foot drop and reaches 78 miles per hour. That seem too simple for you? Then, consider that throughout the ride your seat is rotating either forward or backward in a full 360-degree controlled spin and that according to the Guinness Book of World Records, Eejanaika has 14 inversions-the most of any roller coaster in the world.

Top Thrill Dragster in Sandusky, Ohio

There is more to Ohio than the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame, as Cedar Point Amusement Park proves with their legendary coaster, the Top Thrill Dragster. Living up to its “top thrill” status, the Dragster is one of the tallest and fastest roller coasters in the world and was the first Strata Coaster to climb over 400 feet. The anticipation of the launch sets in as riders inch towards the starting line. Then, as the light turns green, riders speed forward at the rate of 120 miles per hour in less than four seconds. They climb 420 feet into the sky, scale a cliff and turn 270 degrees as they fly toward the finishing line-all in about 17 seconds.

Oblivion in Staffordshire, England

Considered the tallest vertical drop roller coaster in the world, Oblivion, located in Alton Towers in Staffordshire, England actually drops from an angle of 88.8 degrees … you know, so the wheels will stay on the track. As with many coasters, the build-up and anticipation are mounted by a series of videos showing The Lord of Darkness and perpetrating the legend that some of Oblivion’s cars have fallen into the pit-never to be found. Oblivion reaches a top speed of 68 miles and drops passengers into that dark hole in the ground from 180 feet. The entire ride lasts about 75 seconds.

Tower of Terror in Queensland, Australia

Reportedly the tallest and fastest coaster in the Southern Hemisphere, the Tower of Terror, located in Dreamworld in the Gold Coast, Australia is a steel reverse freefall roller coaster. The Tower of Terror shoots weightless riders 100 miles per hour in 6.5 seconds, then climbs 38 stories before passengers face a 6.5 second freefall and 90-degree reverse. As the name suggests, the Tower of Terror makes only vertical moves and isn’t considered by coaster connoisseurs to be a true roller coaster.

Mindbender in Alberta, Canada

Have you ever been out shoe shopping and thought, “Hey, I want to ride a roller coaster?” Well, ahem, if you do, you should head to Galaxyland Amusement Park, located inside West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada. Home to the world’s largest indoor triple loop roller coaster, Galaxyland is the largest indoor amusement park in the world located inside the largest mall in North America. Mindbender features twisting drops, three loops and a double upward helix finale. Sometimes in high season, those intrepid conductors reverse the final car so riders can’t see what’s coming. Sneaky, eh?

Stealth in Surrey, England

Located in Thorpe Park in Surrey, England, the Stealth opened as the fastest roller coaster in Europe in 2006 and goes from zero to 80 in 1.8 seconds. The train shoots to a height of 205 feet where wide-eyed passengers can scan views of the London skyline, Windsor Castle and Guildford Cathedral before shooting 203 feet back to the ground. The Stealth roller coaster features a 60s race track theme called Amity Speedway and cost an estimated £12 million to construct.

Kingda Ka in Jackson Township, New Jersey

Reaching 456 feet and racing 128 miles per hour in 3.5 seconds, Kingda Ka, located at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey, is the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world. It is impossible to know when the train is going to launch-no doubt adding to the ride’s nail-biting anticipation-but passengers are propelled from zero to 128 in less than four seconds, before climbing the main tower, twisting 90 degrees to the left and reaching a total ride height of 456 feet. After a moment at the top, the train plummets through a 270-degree spiral toward the ground. The entire experience is 28 seconds from launch to landing.

credited to bootsnall.com

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