Category: News

This morning, BillShrink delivered a karate chop to the cable cabal with a new service, currently in beta, that shows you how to get the best cable/tv/satellite/dish package for the best price.

How it works is that you enter your info, they run the the numbers, and then deliver you the deals from different providers ranked by price.

BillShrink shows you what you can get, and how much you can save. You can also drill down and see how the price is calculated on a line-item basis, including any equipment costs. BillShrink also displays the price you’ll pay during any applicable promotion, the after-promotion cost, and what that all averages out to on a monthly basis.

To complete the transaction, BillShrink gives you the provider’s number to call, what to ask for in the package, and the referral code to use. The service is free but BillShrink gets a referral fee from the provider for every person who orders using one of their codes.

They do require an email address to use it, so if giving that out isn’t your thing, use a disposable one like Mailinator.

Bundles aren’t included in the calculations, but the site aims to have them up soon. In the meantime, you can add on internet when you call. In the future, BillShrink also plans to let you complete the order without having to make a separate call.

You can use BillShrink to switch services directly, or as a research tool in conjunction with this post, “What To Say To Your Cable Company To Get Them To Lower Your Bill” to negotiate concessions from your provider. A Feb ’10 Consumer Reports cover story on how you can build a cable bundle is another great source of actionable, money-saving info on cable/internet/tv/phone services.

Consumerist asked BillShrink CEO Peter Pham, if it takes 10 engineers working full-time for three months to build a comprehensive overview of cable options, what hope did any consumer ever have of being able to make the right choice?

“Not much,” laughed Pham. “When we tackled it we thought, ok, this is about the same as wireless. As you dug into it, it’s vastly more complicated.” With services like BillShrink, especially after they implement some of the planned upgrades, that can get a little less complex for consumers.

BillShrink [Official Site]

RELATED:
Save a Bundle [Consumer Reports]
What To Say To Your Cable Company To Get Them To Lower Your Bill [Consumerist]

[The following is a post from a friend of mine James Williams. Whilst waiting out a bad economy after college graduation, James worked at a major Atlanta-based airline. The brief stint gave him deep insights into the airline industry and he serves as a guide for family and friends wondering through the wilderness of fare rules, frequent flyer programs, and getting the cheapest flights. He is a Mountain View-based software engineer, loves to travel, and blogs about more geeky fare over at James Williams. If you are the techie-type, I got a feeling you’ll be reading more from him in the future. In the meantime, I’m ecstatic he could fill my gap of being clueless with airline miles.]

Traveling as much as I do can get expensive. The technology downturn of 2003 made me recognize the value of a dollar. Lazy Man has already covered some very good tips on how to save money on airfare, but today I’d like to talk about airline miles.

Here are my top tips to make the most of your airline miles: [Note from Lazy Man: Before we get to the tips, I’m going to distract you with a picture of a hot flight attendant. Sorry James…]

1. Book Early

   Most legacy carriers (US Air, United, Delta, Continental, American) allow you to book up to 330 days in advance. In theory, there is less competition for seats at this time and you may have the best selection of flights. You also will avoid most ticketing fees.

2. Book Late

   After it’s been decided that they won’t be able to sell the last batch of seats, airlines might free up some more frequent flier tickets for sale. Booking under two weeks opens you up to extra fees and penalties for redemption.

3. Book a paid ticket to/from a hub city and award ticket from the hub city
   While it is preferable to book an award ticket for the whole trip, if you are flying from a city with limited capacity, you might find seats easier if you split the flight between a paid ticket and award ticket. For example, let’s say I want to fly from BZN (Bozeman, MT) to CDG(Paris) on Delta. Bozeman is likely to only have small puddle-jumpers from BZN to the nearest hub in Salt Lake City. Prop planes mean limited award seats. You could split up the trip into a paid ticket for the harder to get Bozeman-Salt Lake City and an award ticket for Salt Lake City-Paris.
4. Split up parties of more than two people
   Finding four seats on a flight to a leisure destination can be fairly difficult. For a family of four, try to have Mom fly with one of the kids on one itinerary and Dad with the other kid on another itinerary.
5. Use co-terminals to your advantage
   Co-terminals are airports that count as the same destination for ticketing purposes. This can be helpful in finding tickets if it is possible to fly out of San Francisco and into San Jose for instance. They can differ from airline to airline but generally the major airports in the Bay Area(SFO,OAK,SJC), New York Metro (JFK,LGA,EWR,HPN), greater Miami area (FLL-PBI-MIA) or the greater Los Angeles area (LAX-ONT-SNA) can be considered the same destination. Sometimes the greater Baltimore-Washington Metro area is included (BWI, DCA)
6. Use airline alliances
   All of the legacy carriers save Alaskan Airlines take part in some sort of airline alliance whether it is SkyTeam, Star Alliance, or One World. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses but allow you to book award tickets on partner airlines. Extra ticketing fees may apply.
7. Know the value of your miles
   Most airlines use redemption levels that don’t correlate to the price of the ticket. When you want to redeem an award ticket, first calculate the cents per mile (CPM) for redemption. Divide the price of a paid ticket by the amount of miles it would take to redeem that ticket. If the cost per mile is less than 0.01, you probably should buy the ticket. If the CPM is 1-2 cents, use your discretion and try to find a better valued trip. At 3 CPM or more, book the ticket NOW. If the airline values them at 1 cent per mile, why give them a discount on awarding you for your loyalty?
8. Become an elite member of an airline
   Not only will it maximize the amount of miles you’ll accumulate for trips, but several airlines have additional capacity for award tickets that they only offer to their elite members.

How do you maximize your airline miles? Let us know below.

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Dieter and Keith discuss the AT&T Palm Pre and much more, listen in!

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Thanks to everybody for writing in!

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Mukhtar Mai’s story is heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, even nauseating … but ultimately, her story of inexplicable violence is not about being a victim but a testament to inspiring empowerment of girls and women all over the world through the power of education.

Eight years ago, I got an email from a longtime friend that the New York Times‘ Nicholas D. Kristof (who provides the foreword here) was raising funds to help a gang-rape victim keep her school going in rural Pakistan. After reading the shattering story, I had no choice but to immediately send a check. As Kristof and co-writer/wife Sheryl WuDunn write in their bestselling, life-changing title, Half the Sky, even $27 can change lives for the better forever.

By order of the village council, Mukhtar Mai was brutally raped by four men, as justified punishment for a crime her younger brother did not commit. As a skinny 12-years-old, Mai’s brother was jailed and repeatedly beaten and sodomized for allegedly raping a woman in her 20s who was part of the village’s powerful, lawless, ruling caste. Brutalizing the alleged perpetrator was not enough; Mai’s body became further battleground for degradation.

Expected to commit suicide to save her family from further disgrace, Mai was prepared to die. But something propelled her to get up, report the crime to the police, and demand justice. The police tried desperately to silence her, taking advantage of her illiteracy to create false reports on blank papers which bore her thumbprint.

In spite of such illegal efforts, Mai’s story began to make national headlines, and then the world literally arrived at her door, ready to hear her voice. The Pakistani government was forced to respond, and awarded her a sum equal to $8,500. Having spent most of her life unable to read and write, Mai had been victimized not only by her attackers, but also the police and government because of that illiteracy. Mai was determined that what had happened to her would not happen to other girls and women: with that blood money, Mai started a school, to give the girls strong voices and to teach the boys that a woman’s body is not a war zone.

While the international articles made the world aware about Mai’s story, her memoir adds further depth to her ongoing journey towards justice. Change has come slowly, but the struggle continues. She talks about how silence, obedience, and the denial of knowledge are passed on from mother to daughter in an endless cycle of ‘honor’: “Submission is compulsory,” she explains, then insists, “… knowledge must be given to girls, and as soon as possible, before their mothers bring them up the same way they were raised themselves.” She talks about the three different legal systems women must adhere to, religious, governmental, and tribal which can too often trump all official laws. She talks about the importance of deep relationships with other women, and how her own friendship with a distant cousin gave her courage and literally saved her life.

Read and weep. And then be inspired, energized, empowered to make the world just … in small, major, any, many ways.

To read further updates about Mukhtar Mai since the release of this memoir, check the New York Times news page.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2006 (United States)

Filed under: ..Adult Readers, .Memoir, .Nonfiction, Pakistani, South Asian Tagged: Betrayal, Civil rights, Family, Personal transformation, Politics

Via Prison Planet.com » Sci Tech

SPACE.com
Wednesday, May 26, 2010

While the U.S. Air Force is mum about the orbital whereabouts of its X-37B mini-space plane, a dedicated band of amateur skywatchers has got its cross-hairs on the spacecraft.

The unpiloted X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle 1 was lofted on April 22 atop an Atlas launcher. It is being flown under the auspices of the U.S. Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office.

In U.S. military tracking parlance, when the space plane reached orbit it became identified as Catalog Number 36514, 2010-015A, OTV-1 (USA 212). [Video: X-37B space plane spotted.]

From there it entered a cone of silence regarding any on-orbit duties.

Full story here.

[JURIST] A lawyer for ousted [JURIST report] Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] on Wednesday filed an appeal against an arrest warrant [JURIST report] issued Tuesday on charges of terrorism. Thaksin is accused of involvement in the the recent political violence [JURIST news archive] in Bangkok, as the figurehead of the pro-democracy protesters known as the red shirts [BBC backgrounder]. Thaksin’s lawyer was accompanied by two additional red shirt leaders [Bangkok Post report], who have sworn they will testify that Thaksin was not involved in any acts of terrorism if the court chooses to hear the appeal. The red shirts’ protests in the capital’s central commercial district paralyzed the country for the past two months, and Thaksin has been repeatedly accused of organizing and financing the campaign. The former prime minster was removed from power in 2006 by a military coup and has been living abroad in Cambodia where the government has refused to extradite [JURIST report] him to Thailand for criminal prosecution. The Thai government hopes that the official charge of terrorism will make foreign governments more malleable in their extradition policies.

The Thai government’s response to the recent conflict in Bangkok has been criticized by international human rights organizations. Last week, Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] expressed concern [JURIST report] about the treatment of anti-government protesters detained during the Bangkok demonstrations. The organization chided the Thai government for enacting a “draconian” emergency decree giving Thai security forces broad power to arrest individuals without formal charges and hold them in secret detention. The decree, which lacks judicial oversight, also prevents detainees from having access to legal counsel or family members. Earlier this month, a Thai court sentenced 27 protesters to six months in prison for violating the emergency decree. Under the strict security law [JURIST report] adopted in anticipation of the protests, the red shirts initially faced up to a year in prison, but their confessions allowed the district court to commute their sentences [AFP report]. During their protests, the red shirts demanded that Prime Minster Vejjajiva Abhisit [BBC backgrounder] resign and called for new elections. The Thai government implemented a curfew [JURIST report] in Bangkok and other areas of the country in response to violence that erupted when the leader of the red shirts announced an end to the protests. The curfew remains in effect as the government tries to maintain order.

The U.S. shuttle Atlantis landed today in Florida and successfully completed its last mission to the International Space Station (ISS), after a quarter century of service.

Atlantis crossed the Florida Everglades to the north, through Lake Okeechobee before declining as planned at 08:48 hours local time at Kennedy Space Center National Aeronautics and Space (NASA).

The crew of Atlantis, made by the commander Ken Ham, pilot Tony Antonelli and mission specialists Michael Good, Garrett Reisman, Piers Sellers and Steve Bowen, served a 12-day mission.

Atlantis spent nearly 300 full days in orbit in its 32 missions and traveled 193 million miles.

Now only two other missions remain, one of Discovery scheduled for next September 16 and the other from Endeavour in November, unless NASA decides otherwise.

Related posts:

1. NASA: Space Shuttle Atlantis Last Mission
2. NASA Space Shuttle Atlantis 2010 Revelations!
3. NASA Space Shuttle Launched Today

It’s the stuff of a flea market find, or a hidden treasure in the attic. A pile of dusty film canisters in the basement of the Schenectady Museum & Suits-Bueche Planetarium has yielded some of the world’s oldest surviving radio broadcasts. The 20 shows were first heard on Schenectady radio station WGY between 1929 and 1931. One features a talk by GE founder Thomas Edison in a broadcast celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the incandescent light bulb. Another is a portion of a high school basketball game that’s believed to be the second oldest surviving sports broadcast. They were recorded on a long forgotten machine that GE developed in 1922 called a pallophotophone — after the Greek words for “shaking light sound” — in one of the earliest attempts to record sound on film. But there was only one catch with the great find: There weren’t any known pallophotophones in existence to play back the lost pieces of history. Enter the museum’s curator, Chris Hunter, and GE’s engineers, who together cracked the pallophotophone code.

Talk radio: GE founder Thomas Edison is seen here examining the quality of his motion picture film in 1912 in the library of his West Orange, NJ facility. Photo courtesy of Schenectady Museum.

When Chris came across the film canisters, he wasn’t quite sure what he had discovered. “There were just a lot of scribbles on the cans saying these were radio programs from the twenties,” Chris said.

He had been recruiting former GE engineer Jim Schneiter for the museum’s board and told him about the discovery. Jim then turned to Russ DeMuth, a GE Global Research Engineer, who jumped on the challenge and set out to build his own version of the pallophotophone by studing sketches of the original one designed by GE employee Charles Hoxie more than 80 years ago.

Russ gathered parts for his creation from eBay and elsewhere, all the time trying to figure out if it would actually work. “We didn’t know how these things were created,” Russ said. “We didn’t know whether this thing was going to work at all. We didn’t expect to hear anything.”

Déjà vu! : The recordings had stumped film preservation experts because they were made on 35mm sprocketless film, with each film containing a series of 8-10 parallel soundtracks. Russ’ machine, pictured above, uses modern motors and computer controls to recover the sound from the original film recordings.

But work it did, with the 80-year old recordings coming to life. On one broadcast is what is believed to be the oldest surviving recording of the NBC chimes. On another, the voices of Edison, Herbert Hoover and Henry Ford can be heard in the “Edison Light’s Golden Jubilee” broadcast of October 21, 1929. A portion featuring Edison is available below. At the time, GE commercialized the technology as the RCA Photophone, which was one of four competing technologies that ushered in the end of the silent movie era. The taping of the Edison broadcast in 1929 was part of ongoing tests with the technology.

At present, the museum is considering a number of options for the collection, including inventing a machine to play them for optimum quality. And there is a possibility the collection may become an exhibition at the museum, which owns 37 percent of the radio recordings made in the world before 1931.

Safe and sound: A piece of the pallophotophone film.

* Learn more about the Schenectady Museum
* Read more Global Research stories on GE Reports
* See GE’s innovation timeline

Este pasado fin de semana se puso a la venta el nuevo Alfa Romeo Giulietta y ya podemos calificar de éxito el número de ventas y reservas que este modelo ha obtenido. Recordemos que el Giulietta llega a un sector del mercado muy saturado tanto de modelos como de ofertas por lo que este resultado de ventas es muy destacable.

Durante el pasado fin de semana, entre reservas y ventas directas, se han vendido más de 3.000 unidades (no esta nada mal). Curiosamente, la carrocería de color blanco ha sido la más vendida, por encima del mítico color rojo de Alfa Romeo.

Sobre la motorización, la más elegida entre sus clientes, ha sido el motor diésel 1.6 JTD de 105 CV de potencia.

[View with PicLens]

Related posts:

1. Alfa Romeo Giulietta, precios disponibles
2. Alfa Romeo Giulietta, imágenes oficiales
3. Alfa Romeo Giulietta, vídeo promocional

A Volkswagen adquire mais uma empresa para seu grandioso grupo, dessa vez falamos da Italdesign, mais conhecida por Giugiaro, o sobrenome do fundador da empresa, Giorgetto Giugiaro. Foram vendidas 90% ds ações para a VW e não é nenhuma grande surpresa, uma vez que Giugiaro sempre esteve envolvido em parcerias com o grupo alemão.

Suas habilidades de design geraram grandes trabalhos, como o Palio do ano 2000 pela Fiat. Com mais esse reforço para a VW, ela dá mais um passo em seu plano de se tornar a maior montadora de carros do mundo até 2018.

O preço da aquisição não foi anunciado, mas segundo o Wall Street Journal de ontem (25), foi um custo “substancial”. Agora, a Italdesign será exclusivamente da Volkswagen. Quais serão as próximas novidades (entenda-se: modelos) para os próximos anos?

Via | Inside Line

Filed under: Minivan/Van, Sedan, Safety, Luxury

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has just announced that a total of three new Toyota vehicles have been given Top Safety Pick awards. Both the 2011 Toyota Avalon and 2011 Toyota Sienna were awarded the institute’s highest ratings in front, side, rollover and rear crash tests. The 2010 Lexus RX also nabbed a Top Safety Pick nod. All of the vehicles come with electronic stability control as standard equipment – another parameter for receiving the award.

Toyota’s Sienna earns the honor of being the first minivan to receive the Top Safety Pick since the IIHS added rollover data to its list of crash criteria in 2010. The news is likely to come as music to the ears of Toyota engineers and dealers, both of which have had to stand by and watch their brand’s quality and safety reputation erode under a hail of recalls. Thanks for the tip, Eddie!

[Source: Insurance Institute for Highway Safety]

Three Toyotas latest to earn IIHS Top Safety Picks originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 26 May 2010 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Via Prison Planet.com » Commentary

Bonnie Glaser
OilPrice.com
Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Despite the posturing of his regime, there are signs that Kim Jong-Il’s hold on North Korea may be slipping and international community must be ready.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is considered an international pariah in most nations, but he was welcomed with open arms in China May 3-7.  The visit underscored North Korea’s isolation: Kim’s last foreign visit in 2006 was also to China. Despite approving tough United Nations sanctions after Pyongyang’s second nuclear test, Beijing continues to provide energy and food assistance to the North that remains indispensible for the regime’s survival. Yet, even with China’s help, there are growing signs of economic and political volatility in the DPRK and the risks of instability—including regime collapse — cannot be ruled out.

In late 2009, the North’s leadership revalued the nation’s currency, causing severe inflation and popular unrest.  The regime then barred foreign currency and closed markets, eliminating vital sources of food and other necessities.  Kim suffered a stroke in 2008, but it remains to be seen whether plans to transfer power to his youngest and least experienced son can be carried out smoothly.  It cannot be excluded that the sinking of the South Korean naval vessel Cheonan is an outcome of internal succession politics — a move by a faction seeking to gain power, or even by the leadership itself, seeking to maintain a grip on the military during the transition.

It is premature to predict near-term regime collapse in North Korea, but it is not too early for major regional parties to plan for the effects of instability, potentially including massive refugee flows and unsecure nuclear weapons, materials, facilities, and knowhow that could be smuggled out of the North and into the hands of the highest bidder.  Responses to instability could include decisions by China, South Korea and the US to dispatch troops into North Korea to restore order and to locate and secure weapons of mass destruction facilities.  Absent advance coordination, these forces could come into conflict with each other.

Despite the obvious risks, the US has been unable to establish multilateral cooperation on a coordinated contingency response plan.  Bilateral planning has been stepped up with South Korea under the Lee Myung-bak administration, but China remains unwilling to discuss instability response with the US or the ROK.

Why is Beijing loath to reveal its likely plans in the event of North Korean instability? First, China harbors deep suspicions about US and ROK intentions, fearing that the allies may use instability in the North as a pretext to carry out South Korea-led reunification and to station US troops close to China’s border.  Second, Beijing worries that instability response coordination with the US and South Korea would sour relations with Pyongyang.

Finally, China may be seeking to preserve the “strategic ambiguity” of its response in order to deter all sides, including Pyongyang, from taking actions that would destabilize regional security.

Beijing is not alone in its hesitancy.  Seoul has long been reluctant to coordinate contingency plans with any nation besides the US, worrying that increased transparency may open the door to great-power meddling.  The ROK is particularly anxious about China, which it believes might obstruct efforts to reunify the Korean Peninsula under democratic and free market principles.

The US cannot afford to let great power politics stand in the way of planning an effective response to North Korean instability; the risks are simply too great.  Instead, it should seek to create favorable conditions for the primary parties, namely itself, South Korea, and China, to discuss likely responses to North Korean instability, while keeping its ally Japan informed.

All three governments should be prepared to offer reassurances to reduce the likelihood of miscalculation in the event of instability in North Korea.  For example, the US could assure that it would work with the United Nations; would coordinate with China to secure WMD facilities, materials, and expertise; and would not station troops north of the 38th parallel after stabilization and reconstruction operations are completed.  At the same time, the allies should seek assurances from Beijing that it would not intervene in North Korea’s domestic political situation to prop up a failing regime and would not obstruct ROK reunification efforts.  Moreover, all three nations should agree that their armies would not engage each other in the North, and that no nation would exploit instability in the DPRK as an excuse to threaten any other state.

Despite forecasts of North Korea’s collapse since the death of Kim Il Sung in 1994, the country is still intact.  But the risk of North Korean instability remains real.  Every day that Kim Jong-il’s health continues to deteriorate without clear succession arrangements makes political instability after his death or debilitation all the more likely.  And, every day that the regime continues to develop nuclear weapons and missiles or to pursue destabilizing actions makes the effects of instability all the more dangerous.

Online payment systems may not sound like the hottest piece of technology, but the market is quickly becoming very interesting. If PayPal’s success is any indication, there’s plenty of money to be made from money. Not that you need to tell MasterCard that. Still, the credit card company is maybe starting to feel the heat so it’s planning to lau… (read more)

Will you be in Chi-town attending any of TBS’s Just for Laughs in Chicago events? Then this app will be for you, however it won’t be available until June 1st via the Android Market, App Store and Just for Laughs in Chicago website. The second annual festival spans June 15-19th and includes headliners like Ellen DeGeneres, Cedric the Entertainer, and Dennis Leary among many.

Key Features of the App:

• Shows Descriptions
• Festival Schedule
• Comic Bios
• Venue Information
• Ticket-Purchase Information
• Festival Maps
• Photo Galleries
• Video Clips
• TBS TV Schedule
• TBS Festival Newsletter Signup
• Live Festival Blogs
• Facebook & Twitter Extensions
• Frequently Asked Questions

Few Screenshots of Just For Laughs in Chicago:

We’re starting to see venue apps be very helpful for attendees, such as the Google I/O 2010 app for the developers conference last week.

We’ve carved out a corner of TC Disrupt and created our own Little Shenzhen sweatshop complete with DIY MP3 players, MakerBot 3D printer, and a pneumatic robot called Stabby. More videos of each event will be posted shortly but if you happen to be at Disrupt, we’re down by the RedBull lounge.

Here’s ye another example of why our forum members are the best. Locoman shot this picture of the moon through a 10-inch Dobsonian telescope — with the HTC Incredible, putting that 8-megapixel camera to good use. But it gets even better. Check out his shot of Saturn — yeah, the one with the rings that’s way, way out there — and some more moon shots in his forum post.

This is a post by Android Central. It is sponsored by the Android Central Accessories Store

When I was a kid, we used to play on the street in front of my house. Yeah, I know – seems like years ago. Nowadays, with children and families spending more time inside watching TV or playing video games; I feel like there’s nobody outside in my neighborhood anymore. In fact, most people don’t know their next-door neighbors.

DeHood, sponsors here at TechCrunch Disrupt, wants to crush that problem. Founded by Babak Hedayati, DeHood is a social network for neighborhoods. They are kind of like a one-stop local social network on iPhone (app available here). The goal is to be a one-stop shop for all the local social networking you need to do.

DeHood launches today with a plethora of features and functionality. Users can share what their doing in the local area via a feature called “local buzz.” It’s essentially a location-based Twitter feed of what’s going on in your local area. You can also stay in touch with your friends and other people in the neighborhood and “check in” to venues when you’re in a local area. Another feature is that you can view a map of the neighborhood and see what shops are nearby.

There’s a website version, which has a lot of the same functionality, but the app primarily lives on mobile. The company is funded by the founder, Babak Hedayati, a serial entrepreneur, and he’s hired a large team of seasoned startup veterans to help him with DeHood.

The key challenge for DeHood will obviously be gaining traction in a crowded space. It has been beta tested with a limited number of users and is only launching today, so time will tell whether Babak and team can figure out the secret sauce of user adoption.

Mark Gasson, at the University of Reading, just caught something. A computer virus. Gasson claims to be the first man in the world to become infected with a computer virus.

But by “caught,” we mean he gave the virus to himself, and by “virus,” we mean a program that he designed.

Gasson put the virus in an RFID tag that was then implanted in Gasson’s hand. The tag—like the microchips used to track down missing dogs and cats—had allowed Gasson to open security doors and unlock his cell phone automatically. When infected, the tag spread its virus to other devices, for example, that door-opening system. If other people then used their own hand tags to open the door they could, hypothetically, also catch the virus.

As the BBC reports , the test was meant as a “proof of principle.” Gasson wonders, given the increasing use of implanted technologies like pacemakers, if such infections could threaten our cybernetic futures.

But did Gasson really transmit a virus? Couldn’t we as accurately call his test a novel way to share data? Instead of “scientist infected with computer virus,” couldn’t we call him a cyborg bee, pollinating computer flowers? He picked up something and spread it around, in a system he designed for spreading. Instead of a virus meant to cause harm, perhaps we could call it a helpful program… meant to create, well, publicity.

The Register compares the virus to a similar experiment by Kevin Warwick, a self-proclaimed cyborg who implanted an RFID tag in his arm. From the Register article, an interview with Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at the security software company Sophos:

“The way they are presenting their research is scaremongering nonsense that doesn’t present the true nature of this, frankly, non-threat.”

Related content:
80beats: Mystery of the Conficker Worm Continues: Does It Want to Scam or Spam?
80beats: Computer Virus Travels Into Orbit, Lands on the Space Station
80beats: Sorry, Australian iPhone Users: You’ve Been Rickrolled
DISCOVER: Iris ID

Image: flickr / VanessaO

The accounts from BP on what happened at the well are sounding more and more troubling.  Warning signs were ignored; BP officials refused to listen to a specialist team that had just arrived, even when said team demanded evacuation (and got it, but only from their own company).  The well blew up a flew hours after their helicopter took off.

When events like this happen, we always ask the same question:  how could people be so stupid?  How could they ignore what is now plain to us?  There will be a lot of answers to that question, but I’m willing to bet that a lot of it will end up sounding like “We’d ignored those problems before, and it always turned out all right.“

Update:  A reader sends along this Malcolm Gladwell piece from 1996.

BP – Helicopter – United States – Business – Oil spill

Two new ironic ads on the BP oil disaster — though only the first one is intentionally ironic:

What follows is a Think Progress repost.

Since the disastrous Gulf Coast oil spill, BP and the other companies responsible for the tragedy have been beefing up their lobbying and public relations efforts. Today, the oil giant has full-page ads in the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today defending its response to the oil spill. From the ad:

Since the tragic accident on the Transcocean Deepwater Horizon rig first occurred, we have been committed to doing everything possible to stop the flow of oil at the seabed, collect the oil on the surface and keep it away from the shore.

BP has taken full responsibility for dealing with the spill. We are determined to do everything we can to minimize any impact. We will honor all legitimate claims.

BP’s ads come as a new poll finds that 76 percent of the American public disapproves of how the company is handling the spill. And BP is not taking “full responsibility” for the spill. In fact, officials have repeatedly tried to downplay the disaster and argued that attempts to accurately measure the rate of flow at the seabed are impossible and unnecessary:

– Tony Haywood, BP CEO: “I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to be very, very modest. It is impossible to say and we will mount, as part of the aftermath, a very detailed environmental assessment as we go forward.” [5/18/10]

– Haywood: “The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.” [5/14/10]

– Lamar McKay, President of BP America: “The volume estimates are based effectively on surface expression, because you can’t measure what’s coming out at the seabed.” [Senate testimony, 5/12/10]

– Tom Mueller, BP: “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.” [5/14/10]

– Doug Suttles, BP COO, Global Exploration: “Since the beginning, we’ve said it’s almost impossible to get a precise number. But ourselves and people from NOAA and others believe that something around 5,000 — it’s actually barrels a day — is the best estimate.” [ABC News, 5/14/10]

In Boston Globe op-ed today, columnist Derrick Z. Jackson hits BP for its ads:

It is difficult to conceive of a more resounding insult to our intelligence than BP’s full-page advertisements in the New York Times and USA Today about its response to the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The most intriguing paragraph of the BP ad was, “This is an enormous team effort. More than 2,500 of our operational and technical personnel from around the world are working tirelessly in coordination with the U.S. Coast Guard, and federal, state and local government agencies.’’

But until Deepwater Horizon exploded, BP’s idea of working tirelessly with government agencies was lobbying them to bypass environmental-impact reviews for well permits. Yesterday, the Times had yet another story on how drilling projects have proceeded with environmental waivers, despite President Obama’s so-called moratorium on permits. Deepwater Horizon received an environmental waiver last year and received another one just before the April explosion.

While BP will likely survive this tragedy because of its massive profits, these attempts to shirk responsibility are already beginning to drag the company down in the public’s eyes.

– Amanda Terkel