Author: Serkadis

HAVANT, UK … Diversified industrial manufacturer Eaton Corporation today announced that its proprietary Eatonite™ Laser Clad coating technology was certified by independent test services company DNV after fulfilling requirements stated in the “Guideline for qualification of wear and corrosion protection surface materials for piston rods” developed as part of a Joint Industry Project (JIP).
“Eaton is the first, and to date the only, cylinder manufacturing company that has passed the JIP test requirements,” said Dr. Luis F. Garfias, director of Testing & Qualification for DNV’s Materials & Corrosion Technology Center in Columbus, Ohio. “DNV-certified Eatonite laser coating technology is a significant breakthrough for upstream, offshore applications in the oil and gas industry,” said Astrid Mozes, vice president and general manager of Eaton’s Controls Division. “It will also provide new solutions in key industries like Hydropower and virtually anywhere else piston rods are exposed to severe environmental corrosion.” Piston rod samples made of SAE 4130 steel coated with Eatonite were tested at DNV laboratories in Høvik, Norway, and Columbus, Ohio, for a wide range of physical, mechanical, and electrochemical properties to evaluate the performance of the Eatonite coating against the JIP standard.
“Controlling corrosion is an ongoing challenge for the offshore oil industry,” said Dr. Alexander Bogicevic, senior technology manager of Eaton’s Innovation Center in Southfield, Mich. “We developed the Eatonite laser coating technology to extend the life of piston rods used in hydraulic riser tensioning systems on offshore platforms. Many materials and processes were tested and the result of this multi-year development program was the Eatonite technology. “After proprietary processing, the Eatonite material is twice as hard as conventional Inconel 625, a well known corrosion resistant alloy (CRA), but also has good cladding homogeneity due to the novel laser technology developed to deposit the Eatonite. As confirmed by the DNV certification testing, Eatonite-clad rods deliver the mechanical performance of traditional SAE 4130 steel piston rods, along with the corrosion resistance expected for CRA materials like Inconel 625. It really does give customers the best of both worlds” Eatonite testing is the subject of a technical paper being prepared for the 2010 Offshore Technology Conference (OTC).

More information: [email protected] or: www.eaton.com

Student artists from across the Northwest suburbs exhibited their work at the 2009 Harper College Regional High School Art Show — an annual, vibrant display of 2D and 3D pieces, from photography to sculpture.

The roughly 500 submissions, representing 10 schools from districts 211, 214 and 220, were chosen by the high schools’ art teachers.

Students from Barrington and John Hersey high schools emerged as the show’s top honorees: Justin Lynk of Hersey won the Harper Faculty Award in the 2D category for his photography entry, and Lexy Fischer of Barrington High School scored the Harper Faculty Award in the 3D category for her sculpture.

Both were honored with scholarships at a reception held Dec. 2.

Art teachers from the participating schools also chose first-, second- and third-place winners — as well as honorable mention recipients — in both the 2D and 3D categories from each high school.

The contest “is a way to get our high school students even more excited about art, and also to showcase our facility,” said Harper Assistant Professor Stephany Rimland, who helped coordinate the show.

“This art show encourages the arts, and it also specifically encourages arts at Harper College.”

The Dec. 2 reception allowed student artists and parents to browse the submitted entries, see Harper’s art department and meet Harper art faculty. Dr. Kenneth Ender, Harper’s president, also was there to hand out the two Harper Faculty Awards.

Fremd High School Art Teacher Paul Radek, who helped coordinate the show, said the Harper show provides students the chance to exhibit their work alongside those from other schools and suburbs. The show also, he says, reminds students and parents of Harper’s strong art program.

The schools that participated are Barrington, Buffalo Grove, Elk Grove, Conant, Fremd, John Hersey, Palatine, Prospect, Rolling Meadows and Wheeling.

Aired Dec. 7, 2009 6:11 PM
By KNDU TV

RICHLAND, Wash.–  Students from Columbia Basin College refitted an old SUV to help rehab patients re-learn how to get in and out of a car.

Today the college donated the car to Kadlec Medical Center where they began using it with patients.

17 students helped transform the SUV, which was a trade in from the Cash for Clunkers program this past summer.

Aired Dec. 7, 2009 4:40 PM
By Josh Peterson, KVEW TV Reporter

RICHLAND — Hospital patients with mobility problems at Kadlec Regional Medical Center now have a new way to get rehabilitated.

The new inpatient rehabilitation vehicle is designed to help patients enter vehicles, adjust mirrors and put on seat belts before they get on the road after being released.

Columbia Basin College’s Autobody students built the car in a few weeks.

The truck was a ‘Cash for Clunkers’ car. It was donated from Pasco Auto Wrecking.

Before it arrived, patients used to practice vehicle procedures outside in their own cars.

“Now that we have this capability, we’re gonna be able to practice more regularly and really take some of the stress away from being able to go home after you’ve been in the hospital for an extended period of time,” said Angela Mohondro, Kadlec Director of Rehabilitation.

Mohondro says the rehabilitation vehicle is only the second one in the state.

She says it will be used every day starting today.

Subscribers to our Search and Information Access Research are well aware that we’ve been increasing our coverage of Apache Lucene lately, in keeping with the phenomenal — and still growing — popularity of Apache’s well-known open-source search engine.

This has led to a coverage conundrum (of sorts) for us, inasmuch as it is no longer possible to cover Lucene properly without also devoting a good deal of discussion to closely related projects like Nutch and (especially) Solr. This becomes problematic at times, not just because we’re in essence covering multiple projects under one conceptual umbrella, but because the functional and architectural boundaries between things like Lucene, Nutch, and Solr — though well understood by developers — are easily blurred in a semi-technical writeup unless special care is taken to distinguish between concepts like search server, search engine, crawlers versus parsers, etc.

Some of these bits are unique to Lucene (the "engine" part, for example, consisting of the indexer and query framework), whereas others are unique to Solr (e.g., the "query server" bits that handle data-fetching and -passing over HTTP), whereas other bits (like UI widgets for faceted search) aren’t there at all — you have to build them yourself.

In short, as we expand our coverage of Lucene, we find ourselves investing ever-greater amounts of time and care in tiptoeing the conceptual boundaries around Solr, Nutch, Lucene, Hadoop, and so on. We think we do a pretty good job. But it’s surprising how many people (including us, at times) still have trouble keeping the various pieces of the Apache search world straight.

Our job isn’t made easier by the Apache Foundation’s laissez-faire attitude toward project naming, which has led to an out-of-control zoo of projects with some sensical but oftentimes nonsensical names like Hadoop, Mahout, Tika, Lenya, James, Mina… and the list goes on.

There’s a longstanding tradition in R&D (and elsewhere, of course) of using whimsical, short, purposely obscure code names for projects early in their lifetimes. And that’s fine for prototypes and pre-release versions of software. But a mature product needs a mature name, preferably something descriptive and apropos. For example, Droids is not an entirely inappropriate name for Apache’s autonomous-robots project. It’s at least semantically aligned with the domain. But even if you know enough Hindi to figure out that Mahout is a term for the driver of an elephant, you’re not likely to divine that it is also an open-source project for distributed machine learning algorithms on the Hadoop platform (and you shouldn’t then be forced to look up what Hadoop means, and so on).

So, Suggestion No. 1 for Apache: When a project graduates from incubation, give it a real name.

It would also help if Apache namespaced subprojects and/or related projects in a logical fashion — a fashion that shows the relationship. For example, would it hurt to call Solr "Lucene Search Server" — or at least "Lucene Solr"? Solr is, after all, strictly dependent on Lucene, much the way Sling is dependent on Jackrabbit.

Suggestion No. 2: Make dependencies evident in project names. It helps people understand what the projects are about.

If the world is headed toward a Lucene-* stack (as it surely is), wouldn’t it be nice to be able to refer to it that way? If people are having a hard time understanding that Solr is a search server, wouldn’t it make sense to put "server" in the name? Bottom line, a rational namespace for Apache projects would be a big win for all concerned.

Those of us who regularly tiptoe the boundaries around Apache’s zoo of related projects would like to occasionally REST our feet.

While Google is making strides in real-time search, Yahoo has to sit back and work mostly on the front end and the user experience, as the underlying technology is pretty much a dead end facing an imminent replacement once the Microsoft deal gets underway. But it doesn’t mean that there’s nothing to show, the company has been introducing all sorts of features and updates. The most recent one involves its video search engine which has been getting some attention lately. When doing a search for a show or a movie, Yahoo will list its characters and popular episodes in the left sidebar along with the usual options.

“You can see that the left rail on our video search results page is becoming a place where you can use new ways to explore online videos. By hooking into the “Web of Things,” we have created intelligent contextual refiners to narrow down your search intent intuitively,” Nilesh Gattani and Ranjita Naik from Yahoo Video Search wrote. “The TV refiner that we are launching today organizes TV series queries into main characters, popular episodes, and seasons.”

The new features are similar to the ones Yahoo has been introducing lately, both on the video search engine and in the main one as well. Recently, it has launched similar features for music videos,… (read more)

Back in June, we wrote about an odd lawsuit from a bunch of independent music publishers headed by MCS Music America against Microsoft, Yahoo and RealNetworks claiming that all three failed to secure licenses on the compositions. This seems strange, of course. You would assume that big companies like Microsoft, Yahoo and Real would make sure to secure all the necessary licenses for their music download and streaming operations. However, MCS and the others suggested that the three companies only secured the licenses on the recordings, but not the compositions. What appeared to have happened, was that Microsoft, Yahoo and Real licensed the songs from the major record labels, who also own many publishing operations, and in were told that they had received licenses for both the recording and composition. The problem is that not all of those major labels hold the composition rights. In some cases, those rights are still held by independent music publishers — and there was a fair amount of confusion over who owned what. It was a perfect example of how ridiculous copyright law is today that even in setting up a big music operation from a major company with the major record labels, no one was exactly sure if all the proper rights were secured.

Either way, Microsoft, Yahoo and Real were quick to ask for the lawsuit to be dismissed and Eric Goldman sent over the rather short ruling from last month that does, in fact, dismiss the case stating (surprisingly) that the music publishers failed to show they hold the copyrights they were arguing over. That’s rather incredible, seeing as the original lawsuit went on for pages and pages, claiming to hold various licensing rights. But the court wasn’t buying it:

Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss All Causes of Action of Plaintiff MCS Music America,
Inc. (“MCS”) is granted on the ground Plaintiff MCS has failed to state a legal
claim for copyright infringement. To establish a claim of copyright infringement,
two elements must be satisfied: (1) ownership of a valid copyright, and (2)
unauthorized copying of the original work. Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural
Telephone Services Co., Inc,. 499 U.S. 340, 111 S.Ct 1282 (1991); Jones v. Blige,
558 F.3d 485 (6th Cir.2009).

MCS has failed to demonstrate ownership of any of the copyrights at issue.
Plaintiffs allege MCS is a licensing administrator and an exclusive licensing
agent of the copyrights at issue, but do not allege MCS to be an owner of such
works. Without demonstrating legal ownership, MCS is not able to plead all of the
necessary elements of copyright infringement.

Plaintiffs ask the court to consider the affidavit of Janice Bane with regard to
MCS’s rights. The court will not consider Ms. Bane’s affidavit in deciding this
issue. In ruling on a motion to dismiss, a court properly may consider only
evidence contained in or asserted in the pleadings. As a general rule, matters
outside the pleadings may not be considered in ruling on a motion to dismiss
unless the motion is converted to one for summary judgment under Rule 56. Jackson
v. City of Columbus, 194 F.3d 737, 745 (6th Cir.1999). Weiner v. Klais & Co., 108
F.3d 86, 88-89 (6th Cir.1997). Furthermore, even if the court were to consider Ms.
Bane’s affidavit, it does not indicate any ownership on the part of MCS, thus
rendering its consideration moot.

Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss All Causes of Action of Plaintiff MCS is GRANTED.

On top of that, MCS requested the right to amend the lawsuit, and the court shot them down there as well:

Plaintiffs have moved to amend their complaint a second time. The Federal Rules of
Civil Procedure state “… a party may amend its pleading only with the opposing
party’s written consent or the court’s leave. The court should freely give leave
when justice so requires.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(a)(2). However. Plaintiffs have not
demonstrated their amended complaint would show MCS has ownership of any of the
copyrights at issue and would therefore be futile. For that reason, Plaintiff’s
Motion to Amend Complaint is DENIED.

So much for that, then. Somewhere along the line, it looks like these publishers got some really poor legal advice, as this case didn’t last long at all, and to be tossed out so early is pretty bad.

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Filed under: Spy Photos, SUV, Mercedes-Benz, Luxury

The next iteration of the Mercedes ML-class has been caught braving the European cold and snow for some testing as it gets ready for its debut.

There will probably be plenty of subtle stylistic changes to distinguish it from the current model, but the biggest news about the coming SUV is that it will be smaller. Of course, it’s hard to tell from the cloak of darkness camouflage on the prototype pictured, but it does look slightly less imposing than the current hauler. Early indications are that the various engine offerings in the next ML will focus on efficiency over performance, but we suspect it won’t be a slouch dynamically.

We can expect it to appear in the middle of 2011 as a 2012 model.

Spy Shots: Next-generation Mercedes-Benz ML caught winter testing originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 10:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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[See post to watch Flash video]

We have not seen much from AT&T when it comes to promoting their first Snapdragon smartphone, but LG is not about to let their flagship smartphone sink into obscurity without a fight.

The smartphone is launching with a tie-in to James Cameron’s Avatar epic, and will be coming with the Avatar trailer pre-installed on the device.

LG has also launched a microsite at www.lgexpo.com, a facebook page, and exclusive content for Lg eXpo users.

The smartphone is available now at AT&T for $199.99 with contract and after rebate,  with the projector costing an additional $179.99.

Via Unthinkable.biz

Many investment banks reported robust earnings during the last couple of quarters. Earnings outperformance was based on a tripod of contributors: a broad-based rally in asset prices, a partial recovery in investment banking revenues, and strong fixed-income trading revenues. Although these earnings weren’t the result of accounting gimmicks, they are of questionable quality for other reasons and may prove transitory. We believe that the worst has already passed for investment banks in this cycle, but we also believe that most investment banks will likely stumble on their earnings before a sustainable earnings uptrend establishes itself.

Higher Revenues but also Earnings-Quality Issues
Investment banks’ asset management and principal investment-related revenues have done well during the last couple of quarters, but the two revenue lines lead to different conclusions regarding future earnings. Asset management revenues are generally calculated as a percentage of assets under management, while principal investment revenues are generally the markup in the value of investments, and to an extent securities inventory, that an investment bank bought using its own capital. It’s no mystery why these revenue lines did well as just a brief glance at the lineup of Morningstar Indexes shows a year-to-date broad-based rally across asset classes. We believe earnings of investment banks with large asset management revenues as a percentage of their total, such as Lazard (LAZ), should fare relatively better than companies that may have received earning boosts from gains, such as Jefferies (JEF) and Greenhill (GHL). This is illustrated in the following table.

Recent quarters have been like Period 1–markets are rising and investment banks, like our sample company, have recognized higher asset management revenues as a result of higher AUM and recognized principal investment gains from marking up the securities they own. However, when the markets are flat as in Period 2, our company will still generate a steady level of asset management revenues while principal investment gains will disappear. The lack of principal investment gains will actually likely cause a sequential drop in earnings if our company recognized gains in the prior period. In the event that overall markets decline as in Period 3, asset management revenues will decrease somewhat, but our company would recognize principal loss. During these three periods, our sample investment bank recognized $875 of asset management revenues and $0 of principal investment gains, even though both AUM and principal investment/securities positions at the end of Period 3 are the same as the beginning of Period 1. This is why we prefer companies that derive more revenues from asset management than principal investment gains because the quality of earnings is better.

Economic Recovery Good for Underwriting, Advisory Revenues
The primary cause of the rebound in asset prices, belief of an imminent economic recovery, also led to a rebound in traditional investment banking lines such as underwriting and financial advisory. Third-quarter investment banking revenues were up 50% to more than 100% from their fourth quarter of 2008 or first quarter of 2009 trough at many investment banks. Although we were skeptical of the underwriting revenues in the second quarter, as we believed everyone was rushing to raise capital during what was, at the time, a questionable brief window of opportunity, a sustained economic recovery should create an uptrend in investment banking revenues. That said, we forecast that 2009 investment banking revenues will still be approximately 40% lower than their 2007 peak at many investment banks and that it will be several years before those lofty heights are seen again.

Good Economy Could Hinder Trading Profits
Although improving economic conditions and the unfreezing of the capital markets were a boon for underwriting revenues, they actually cast a shadow over future fixed-income trading revenues. Furthermore, this shadow could be rather dark as cash fixed-income trading has arguably been the most important driver of the recent outperformance of investment banks; multiple investment banks reported record-breaking trading revenues.

Even after adjusting for write-downs and debt-valuation adjustments and even if you disregard companies where 2008 revenues were weak or the income line contains other revenues besides cash fixed income, the year-over-year increase shown in the table above is clearly abnormal. Fear, volatility, and constrained investment bank balance sheets were primary contributors to the increased fixed-income trading profitability. Many investment banks exhibited a sequential decrease in fixed-income-related trading revenues from the second to third quarter of this year as those contributing factors started to abate. As prospects for an economic recovery are ever brighter, the risk premium that investment banks were able to earn on fixed-income trading has begun to shrink. A decrease in fixed-income profitability started last quarter, and we don’t expect the downward trend to reverse until normal fixed-income trading revenue levels are reached once again. In a conference call, the chairman and CEO of Piper Jaffray (PJC) , Andrew Duff, anticipated that fixed-income sales and trading revenues in a normalized environment could be 50% lower than their second quarter of 2009 results.

Overall Take
Recent results of investment banks have been good, but they were a result of likely transitory tailwinds that led to the relatively poor quality of earnings. Of the tripod of sources that have supported investment bank earnings, we believe outsized investment gains and fixed-income trading revenues should be petering out while underwriting, financial advisory, and asset management revenues will hold fairly steady or increase. The net effect on most investment banks will be negative, as principal investment and trading revenues have generally been a larger percentage of revenues. For example, FICC and principal investments accounted for approximately 60% of Goldman Sachs’ (GS) net revenues, principal transactions were 40% of Morgan Stanley’s (MS) net revenues, and principal transactions were 55% of Jefferies’ net revenues after mandatorily redeemable preferred interest in the third quarter. If even just one leg of the tripod buckles and nothing takes its place, recently elevated earnings will fall.

Earnings May Hold Up for These I-Banks
We do believe there are several investment banks that are less likely to stumble on earnings because of their revenue mix or special circumstances. They are Evercore Partners (EVR), Lazard, and Stifel Financial (SF). Evercore derives the bulk of its revenues from mergers and acquisitions and restructuring advisory. The unfreezing of the capital markets and more positive economic outlook should lead to more M&A activity. The aftermath of the financial crisis still needs to be cleaned up, so restructuring advisory is still likely on the increase for several quarters. Lazard also generates the bulk of its revenues from M&A and restructuring advisory, but also has a sizeable asset management division. We believe Stifel Financial may avoid an earnings dip, as its recent acquisition of some UBS (UBS) wealth-management offices in the U.S. could replace the lost revenue from a likely fixed-income trading revenue decrease. Although we believe these companies’ earnings may outperform those of their peer group in the near term, please look at their respective Analyst Reports to see if we believe they’re currently attractive on a long-term basis.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Wanna Hedge? Think Silver Not Gold
• The Fragile Recovery Of The Oil Services Sector
• The Second Wave Of Mortgage Resets Begins

Deutsche Bank has released an interesting note based on conversations with the Consumer Electronics Agency. It provides a nice glimpse on what the mood is so far:

DB: We participated in CEA’s Black Friday Results Webinar this week. Below
are some takeaways:

Consumer electronics top 10 “Wish lists” changes from 2008 to 2009, based on phone survey:

    *Notebooks still at the top of the list
    * MP3, video games and digital cameras moved up the list, while GPS and
    DVD players moved down the list
    *New to the list this year were E-readers, iPhone, Blu Ray

In store survey on Black Friday for shoppers “high interest” list GPS went from #1  ast year to #4 this year, TV went from #4 last year to #1 this year, Blu Ray move way up from #15 to #3, Laptop up a bit, video games about even Promotional activity, was less intense than CEA forecasted in many products.

    *Lowest prices on Blu Ray, netbooks and TV’s was not as low as expected
    *Lowest prices on notebooks and GPS was discounted more than expected
    *On TVs, the biggest discounts on small TVs while prices on big TVs were     less discounted

-CEA raised holiday spending forecast for to -5.9% from -7.5% compared to down -6.4% in holiday 2008.

*Increase mostly due to firmer pricing, particularly in TVs which was helped     by better trends on larger screens than expected. 32″ was the sweet spot,     but unit sales in 40″+ was better than expected

 *Reduced forecast for video game revenues, but this was due to strength in portable units, which  lowers ASP’s

*GPS units worse than expected
*Camera outlook increased, with DSLRs surprisingly strong
*Blu Ray units helped by bundling

Based on their survey work, CEA Seemed encouraged with Black Friday

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Black Friday Will Be Insanely Scary And Busy This Year
• Startling Jump In eCommerce Spending On Cyber Monday
• The European Retailers Prepared To Invade And Kill Their American Counterparts

The ASA110H absolute sensor is the hybrid version of the familiar ASA510 sensor. This innovative development offers decisive advantages: High accuracy, high resolution and additional digital and analog outputs which make it suitable for both linear and angle measurement.
The small, compact sensor in a metal housing captures position changes by scanning the newly developed two-lane measuring scale MBA110. The permanently attached translation module processes the sensor signals via battery backup even in a currentless state and is particularly suitable for applications requiring both absolute and incremental signals.
The additional outputs allow digital (line driver) or analog 1Vss signal output.

Bus operation is particularly useful for applications with multiple axes. The integrated RS485 interface enables up to 31 devices to be connected together via a single cable strand. Profibus, CANbus and Interbus connections are available to the user via the IF09 Gateway.

With a resolution of 1µm in the absolute channel and high control dynamics via real-time channel 1Vss or line driver, combined with immunity to dirt and vibration, the ASA110H offers the clear benefits of a magnetic measurement system.

Protech Systems.has released a new series of fanless 15”/17”/19” Touch Screen Panel PC – PPC-7915/17/19, powered by an Intel® Atom N270 Processor to meet the demand of quiet and energy saving. It features low power consumption, integrated touchscreen, and IP65 dust/water protection. Utilizing the Intel® Atom processor provides efficient, reliable performance at a fraction of the cost. Protech’s Touchscreen Panel PC solution would be an ideal solution for automation control, HMI, testing equipment, process monitoring, kiosks and digital signage.

Fanless and Low Power Consumption

The PPC-7915/17/19 series feature robust, industrial design with outstanding Fanless thermal control and are available with Intel® Atom™ 1.6 GHz processors. The total system power consumption is only 80W in fully loading mode. The fanless application can efficiently expand the product life time and increase the durability of the model. They are ideal for high-performance control platforms for machine builders and plant engineering applications.

Panel and Touchscreen Solution

The panel is with high brightness 350 nits TFT display and up to 1280 x 1024 pixels. It can be also switched to sun-light readable panel for customization. Moreover, it utilizes 5 wire touchscreen to guarantee a high calibration stability and a long term accuracy. We also offer difference touch solution such as capacitive, inferred & saw for tailor made service.

Open Frame and Mounting Design

To fit individual mechanical design and decoration, Protech brings up open frame concept. Its unique modular design allows several mechanical mounting solutions including open frame, panel mount bezel, IP65 bezel, and wall mountable bezels. System integrator can install the panel pc to the factory control machine without front bezel. Or, they can be built up customized front bezel based on difference requirements.

Rich I/O Connection

The series is equipped with VGA output which is available to connect second display up to 1600 x 1200 resolution. The digital I/O, parallel and four serial interfaces offer RS-232/422/485 industrial protocol for communication. For network capability, two Gigabit Lan ports provide more flexible connection for users.

Excellence Expansion Capability

With additional riser card, PPC-7915/17/19 can be added to two adapter cards such as PCIe, PCI or ISA. It offers more flexible solution to users in building system. Also, the internal mini PCI slot allows user to plug in 802.11 wirless module for area network transmission.

Embedded Application

For embedded applications, the PPC-7915/17/19 can be equipped with a Compact Flash reader for excellent vibration and shock resistance. It is available to pre-install Windows XP, XP embedded, Windows 7, Windows CE and Linux operating system.

Protech’s Panel PCs are fully documented and tested to meet FCC, CE and ROHS compliance standards for easy integration into existing systems. “Protech offers a wide variety of custom options such as custom front bezel, touch screen, LCD panel, I/O port and even logo to truly make this product a one of a kind panel pc for your application,” said by Charlie Yang, product manager of Protech System.

Filed under: Coupe, Performance, Government/Legal

Whenever we’ve mentioned the Cizeta V16t supercar here on the pages of Autoblog in the past, we have always received mixed reactions. With its love-it-or-hate-it, Diablo-prototype looks and its unique transverse V16 engine, the car was a stunning achievement by former Lamborghini engineer, Claudio Zampoli. It was his vision, his engineering and his design work that made this project come to fruition. It was also his initials, C.Z., or “Ci Zeta” in Italian, that led to the vehicle’s name. While only ten of the cars were ever built, they have attained a certain cult-like following among some enthusiasts.

Although often misidentified as a Cizeta Moroder, the correct name does not include the name of music composer Giorgio Moroder, who was an early investor that dropped out in the planning stages. The 560-horsepower, V16 beast was said to be good for well over 200 MPH in its day, and for anyone who has seen or heard it in person, it’s not hard to believe. We consider ourselves very lucky indeed to have spent some time in one of these Veyron-preceding 16-cylinder marvels. The red one you see above is so familiar to all of us in the SoCal car community that we sometimes forget just how exotic it really is. We’ve seen it at numerous events around Southern California and have gotten to know Mr. Zampoli as well.

Imagine our shock, then, to hear that the very Cizeta we know best has been seized by Federal authorities. According to news reports, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has seized the car, alleging that Zampoli violated U.S. customs and environmental laws when he brought the car into the country in 2001. One issue was the price claimed for the vehicle when it was brought over, which at $125,000 was approximately one fourth of its price when new.

The other issue is the fact that the car was never certified by U.S. agencies for emissions and safety regulations. It is not uncommon for such small manufacturers to skip U.S. importation because of the cost involved in crash testing these expensive autos. Some are granted exemptions using the government’s Show or Display rules, and others are sometimes imported as museum pieces that are never registered for road use.

We know that there will be a lot more to this story as it unfolds. For one thing, we know that Mr. Zampoli moved his operations to the U.S. several years ago. We also believe that this particular vehicle never belonged to him. It was allegedly shipped over for updates and repairs by its Austrian owner in 2001 and was supposed to be shipped back by 2004 after receiving an extension on its stay. For one reason or another, the owner never had it shipped back. It has always worn European tags and a manufacturer plate when out and about.

While the official ICE statement that alludes to these cars being “a real threat to public health and safety” is laughable in many ways, the fact remains that the Cizeta was never certified for sale in the States and due to its extremely limited production, it probably never received an exemption for Show or Display. For now, the authorities are trying to have the car forfeited to the federal government, with the intent to have it auctioned to an overseas buyer eventually. We’ll be sure to keep you posted. Thanks for the tips, everyone.

[Source: The Orange County Register]

REPORT: U.S. customs agents seize a very familiar gray-market Cizeta V16t originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 09:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rapid7 chose to publish a free version of their NeXpose scanner. The software is available for less then a month, and still has to prove itself to the general community. We are publishing the experiences of our first look on this product. The NeXpose Community integrates with Metasploit, and the integration will be covered in the next article.

Installation The installation is simple enough – just run the installer. It asks for a username/password for the web interface, and then installs itself. There are no errors when installing on Windows 7, XP SP3 and Win2003 Server.

First run
Start up on Windows 7 was not successful. NeXpose Community just threw a lot of access denied error messages. As far as i could understand, the access denied messages are because of an attempt to modify the registry which is protected under Windows 7. Even when using Run As Administrator i got the same results.
The run was successful from the Windows2003 server installation. The first start up was extremely slow, it ran for more then 15 minutes configuring and updating itself. After that, the web interface is available for login at https://serverip:3780

First Scan
In order to scan you need to configure a Site, with target IP’s within it. You can add several target IP’s within the same site. The scanning options include the following scanning templates:

• Full audit : Performs a full network audit of all systems using only safe checks, including network-based vulnerabilities, patch/hotfix checking, and application-layer auditing. Only default ports are scanned, and policy checking is disabled, making this faster than the Exhaustive scan.

• Exhaustive : Performs an exhaustive network audit of all systems and services using only safe checks, including patch/hotfix checking, policy compliance checking, and application-layer auditing. Performing an exhaustive audit could take several hours or even days to complete, depending on the number of hosts selected.

• Penetration test : Performs an in-depth penetration test of all systems using only safe checks. Host-discovery and network penetration options will be enabled, allowing NeXpose to dynamically discover additional systems in your network to target. In-depth patch/hotfix checking, policy compliance checking, and application-layer auditing will not be performed.

These templates and their behaviour cannot be modified in the NeXpose Community.

You can run the scan at scheduled intervals as well as manually. Once you initiate the scan, the scanning engine is very fast, and usually completes Penetration Test scan within 5-7 minutes on a fast link.

Scan Results
The scan results are presented in a very clear manner, for each site separately. The Penetration Test template on a Damn Vulnerable Linux 1.5 with active HTTP target was scanned in less then 3 minutes, and identified the following vulnerabilities

• PHP Multiple Vulnerabilities Fixed in version 4.4.9
• PHP Unspecified ‘glob’ Vulnerability
• PHP Crafted UTF-8 Inputs Buffer Overflow
• Apache Signals Sent to Arbitrary Processes Denial of Service
• PHP session.save_path/error_log Values Not Checked Against open_basedir and safe_mode
• Apache mod_imap/mod_imagemap Cross-Site Scripting Vulnerability in imagemap File Menus
• HTTP TRACE Method Enabled
• ICMP timestamp response

The reporting, although crippled compared to the commercial versions of NeXpose is still very good. You can schedule report generation and sending, and you can configure a baseline for each report – you get comparative results of the changes between the scans. This is very useful for automated scanning and information required by IT Auditors and Information Security Officers.

Conclusions
NeXpose Community is a valuable addition to the free tools that each security professional can use in his/hers work. It is very useful in terms of automated audits, and very interesting that it integrates with the Metasploit Exploit Framework. It still has glitches and issues on some platforms, but all tools are work in progress, so for the time being just add it to your toolset, don’t replace any tools with it.

Talkback and comments are most welcome

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Even though an estimated 170 million people worldwide are infected with Hepatitis C, the current treatment can only help about half of them. However, new research suggests that a common vitamin could greatly increase Hepatitis C treatment’s effectiveness.

by Nicole Cutler, L.Ac.

Previous research has provided evidence pointing toward a Vitamin D deficiency in those with chronic Hepatitis C. This association has spawned an interest in how Vitamin D could help those with viral hepatitis. While Vitamin D supplementation may help prevent some complications of advancing liver disease, deciphering this vitamin’s role in Hepatitis C has been relatively limited – until now.

Approximately 15 percent of those infected with Hepatitis C have an immune system that is able to eliminate the virus. Unfortunately, the remaining 85 percent infected with Hepatitis C end up with a chronic illness. If the Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is not eradicated, it can progress to more serious forms of liver disease like cirrhosis, liver cancer or liver failure.

Combination Therapy
While great strides in HCV treatment have been made over the past decade, the current standard of care can help approximately 50 percent of those infected beat the virus. Referred to as combination therapy, this standard treatment consists of two drugs: pegylated interferon and ribavirin.

About half of those with the virus do not respond to combination therapy. Consequently, the pharmaceutical industry has been dedicating enormous resources into improving these odds. Taking their cue from the successful management of HIV/AIDS, much research is focused on developing a third drug, that when added to pegylated interferon and ribavirin, will create a highly effective triple therapy for Hepatitis C.

Vitamin D for Triple Therapy
Based on results of a preliminary Israeli study, Vitamin D could represent the best possible candidate for a third substance to comprise triple Hepatitis C therapy. As reported at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD), adding a daily dose of Vitamin D to the regimen of pegylated interferon-alfa 2 and ribavirin might increase Hepatitis C response rates to therapy.

According to lead investigator Saif M. Abu-Mouch, M.D., from the Department of Hepatology, Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera, Israel, “This preliminary study confirms the benefit of adding Vitamin D to conventional antiviral therapy in patients with chronic Hepatitis C.” Details of Abu-Mouch’s study are described below:

· 89 participants with HCV were recruited.

· 58 patients received peginterferon-alfa 2b 1.5 ug/kg once per week and ribavirin 1000 to 2000 mg daily (control group).

· 31 patients received the same treatment plus Vitamin D 1000 to 4000 IU daily.

· By the fourth week of treatment, a rapid virological response was seen in 44 percent of the patients who received Vitamin D and in 18 percent of the control group.

· At the twelfth week of treatment, 96 percent of the group who received the addition of Vitamin D and 48 percent of the control group tested negative for HCV.

If the results of this study were to be extrapolated and applied to the general Hepatitis C population, adding Vitamin D could nearly double the current success rate of HCV antiviral therapy. When added to pegylated interferon and ribavirin, even rigorously tested drugs in development haven’t been able to claim a 96 percent success rate. Thus, we can expect to see a great deal of excitement and larger human trials exploring the potential of Vitamin D as the missing ingredient in Hepatitis C triple drug therapy.

Editor’s Note: For more information about Hepatitis C and Vitamin D deficiency, including potential dangers of a Vitamin D overdose, read Caution: Hepatitis C and Vitamin D Deficiency.

References:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2364654/can_vitamin_d_treat_chronic_hepatitis.html?cat=70, Can Vitamin D Treat Chronic Hepatitis C Infection?, Kristie Leong, MD, Retrieved November 28, 2009, Associated Content, Inc., November 2009.

http://www.hcvadvocate.org/news/newsRev/2009/NewsRev-337.html#_Vitamin_D_Boosts, Vitamin D Boosts Treatment of Chronic Hepatitis C, Maryann Gromisch, RN, Retrieved November 28, 2009, hcvadvocate.org, November 2009.

http://www.hepatitis-central.com/mt/archives/2008/10/hepatitis_c_and_11.html, Caution: Hepatitis C and Vitamin D Deficiency, Nicole Cutler, L.Ac., Retrieved November 28, 2009, Natural Wellness, 2009.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/711902, Vitamin D Has Benefits in Chronic HCV Infection, Megan Brooks, Retrieved November 28, 2009, Medscape LLC, 2009.

Guy Fieri is one of those people that you either love, or hate (while secretly loving). He’s been touring round the country like a rock star with his Road Show and we managed to catch last nights gig in Kansas City. It was a serious party, but we still walked away with a few tips that you can put to use in your own kitchen!

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