:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 10.24.2006 ::
:: "Evaluating Firefox 2" ::
From ZDNet
Firefox 2 is officially shipping. Following on Robert Vamosi's evaluation of IE 7, here is his take on the new open source browser:
The good: Firefox 2 adds built-in antiphishing protection, search engine suggestions, session festore, inline spell-checking, and Live Titles; the browser is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux; localized versions available in many different languages.
The bad: The Firefox 2 uninstall leaves behind a mess; some 1.5 version add-ons will break in 2.0; there are no thumbnail previews of open tabs; the browser doesn't yet pass the Web Standards Project Acid2 test.
The bottom line: Mozilla Firefox 2 is a winner, beating Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 on security, features, and overall cool factor and deserving our Editors' Choice award.
ALSO
Firefox 2 Launch - Interview With Chris Beard
Slashdot
posted by me
:: 11:26:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Get Your Daily Plague Forecast" ::
From Wired News
A new website mashes health data with Google Maps to track global disease outbreaks.
By Seán Captain.
posted by me
:: 11:21:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Bush drops 'stay the course' slogan as political mood sours" :::: 10.16.2006 ::
Takeover could come in a year, but more troops may go to Bagdhad, says US general
Julian Borger in Washington and Richard Norton-Taylor
From Guardian Unlimited
The top US general in Iraq said yesterday he might send more troops into the battle for Baghdad, after an announcement that the Iraqi government had agreed to a timetable for political and military measures aimed at curbing the violence.
General George Casey said the US-led coalition was three-quarters of the way through the process of training Iraqi forces, and predicted that those forces would be "completely capable of taking over responsibility for their own security" in 12 to 18 months.
The White House, meanwhile, announced that George Bush had stopped using the slogan, "Stay the course", while the president himself hammered a new buzzword: "Change". "We're constantly changing. The enemy changes, and we change. The enemy adapts to our strategies and tactics, and we adapt to theirs. We're constantly changing to defeat this enemy," he said, after visiting a Florida company making a device for sniffing out roadside bombs.
"I don't hear anything that would suggest change in policy, just a restatement of it," Rand Beers, a former strategist in the Bush administration's national security council, said, pointing out that there had been previous promises about Iraqi troop training and political reforms.
In an indication of the mounting pressure for a change of course, the New York Times yesterday devoted its entire leader column to calling for a new solution to the "disaster" of Iraq and the sacking of the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.
Read more here.
posted by me
:: 11:13:00 PM [+] ::
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:: News from Smallville? :::: 10.03.2006 ::
Rare meteorite found in Kansas field
Seattle Post Intelligencer
GREENSBURG, Kan. -- Scientists located a rare meteorite in a Kansas wheat field thanks to new ground-penetrating radar technology that someday might be used on Mars.
The dig Monday was likely the most documented excavation yet of a meteorite find, with researchers painstakingly using brushes and hand tools to preserve evidence of the impact trail and to date the event of the meteorite strike. Soil samples also were bagged and tagged and organic material preserved for dating purposes.
Even before they had the meteorite out of the ground, the scientific experts at the site were able to debunk prevailing wisdom that the spectacular Brenham meteorite fall occurred 20,000 years ago. Its location in the Pleistocene epoch soil layer puts that date closer to 10,000 years ago.
"We know it is recent," said Carolyn Sumners, director of Astronomy at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, as she surveyed progress on the dig. "Native Americans could have seen it."
Read more here.
ALSO
Does world-record meteorite await unearthing in Kansas?
Kansas City Star
AND
Doubts cast on meteorite
The Kansas City Star
posted by me
:: 11:23:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "State Dept. Confirms Rice-Tenet Meeting" ::
By ANNE GEARAN
The Associated Press
via The Washington Post
JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice did receive a CIA briefing about terror threats just about two months before the Sept. 11 attacks, but the information was not new, her chief spokesman said.
In doing so, Sean McCormack confirmed a meeting _ on July 10, 2001 _ that his boss had said repeatedly she could not specifically recall. She had said earlier that there were virtually daily meetings at the time.
A new book by reporter Bob Woodward of Watergate fame describes the White House meeting as an emergency wakeup call that Rice had brushed off. Rice was President Bush's national security adviser at the time and was promoted to the top diplomatic job last year.
posted by me
:: 9:18:00 AM [+] ::
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