news 1-04-06

'Irving? Let the guy go home' David Irving, the infamous British war historian, is today sitting in an Austrian jail, accused of denying the Nazi Holocaust. So why is an American Jewish academic who dramatically crushed Irving in the British courts saying he should be released? When you ask Professor Deborah Lipstadt for her thoughts on David Irving's forthcoming trial, the very last thing you expect her to say is: "Let the guy go home. He has spent enough time in prison." Lipstadt, the American Jewish academic who exposes Holocaust deniers is not exactly David Irving's greatest fan. But five years after she famously defended her own reputation in the High Court, and in doing so shredded Irving's, she is arguing that the Austrian authorities should probably let him go, saying the far-right will find a martyr if he goes to jail.

http://tinyurl.com/ceww9

Owners' Web gives Realtors run for money MADISON, Wis.--Across the country, the National Association of Realtors and the 6 percent commission that most of its members charge to sell a house are under assault by government officials, consumer advocates, lawyers and ambitious entrepreneurs. But the most effective challenge so far emanates from a spare bedroom in the modest home here of Christie Miller. Miller, 38, a former social worker who favors fuzzy slippers, and her cousin, Mary Clare Murphy, 51, operate what real estate professionals believe to be the largest for-sale-by-owner Web site in the country. They have turned Madison, a city of 208,000 known for its liberal politics, into one of the most active for-sale-by-owner markets in the country. And their success suggests that, in challenging the Realtor association's dominance of home sales, they may have hit on a winning formula that has eluded many other upstarts. Their site, FsboMadison.com (pronounced FIZZ-boh) holds a nearly 20 percent share of the Dane County market for residential real estate listings.

http://tinyurl.com/bq3rx

 

Palestinian Authority: A guide for the perplexed Ynet brings you an abridged guide to chaos, anarchy and politics as the Palestinian Authority heads to elections. First in a three-part series Ali Waked  When Mahmoud Abbas was elected chairman of the Palestinian Authority a year ago, both Israel and the Palestinian Authority hoped his election would lead to meaningful change. But a year later, things have never been worse in the PA, and there has never been as much uncertainty about its future – and about ours. At midnight on December 31st, all Palestinian organizations announced that as far as they were concerned the truce was over. Most organizations marked the occasion by firing rockets towards Israel. Hamas, for its part, was more careful in its statement, and its military wing announced that following the end of "tahadiya," (temporary calm), the Palestinian resistance would respond to Israeli "crimes" against the Palestinians.

http://tinyurl.com/d7hge

Pope to visit Auschwitz Benedict XVI to visit Nazi death camp during Poland trip  Yossi Bar Pope Benedict XVI is scheduled to visit the Auschwitz death camp as part of his visit to Poland in May. A spokesman for the archbishop of Krakow, Stanislaw Dziwisz, told The Associated Press that Dziwisz had invited the German-born pontiff to visit the former Nazi death camp.

http://tinyurl.com/8epum

(Only important if you are following the shipping industry)

Alstom sells shipyard Alstom, the builder of the Queen Mary 2 cruise liner, sold its unprofitable shipbuilding business to Aker Yards of Norway on Wednesday, ending 20 years of involvement in ocean liners as it steers away from financial turmoil. The two groups said they would set up a joint firm to control the yards and that Aker would pay Alstom E50 million, or $59.4 million, for a 75 percent stake. Alstom would inject E350 million into the new shipyard firm. The total cost to Alstom of quitting its shipbuilding business is E 300 million. Alstom has promised to keep 25 percent of the business until 2010, Aker said. Alstom said the deal would translate into losses of E100 million at most, and that its debt would increase by no more than E300 million. "The disposal is good for Alstom, even at this price," said Julien Quistrebert, an analyst at Richelieu Finance. "This was a loss-making operation with a very heavy cost structure." The shipyards deal concentrates ownership in a hard-pressed sector which is now showing some signs of recovery from a slump in tourism after Sept. 11, 2001. With yards employing 13,000 people in five countries, Aker is one of the top three European shipbuilders alongside Alstom and Fincantieri of Italy. It has turned around money-losing yards in Germany and the United States.

http://tinyurl.com/dl6rw

`Israel digging under Al-Aksa,` or not   JERUSALEM, Israel (UPI) -- Muslim leaders Tuesday accused Israel of digging underneath Al Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem. The site, one of Islam`s holiest, is in danger, they said.  Israeli officials categorically denied the claims and this reporter who visited the alleged underground site saw no evidence of a dig towards the mosque.  The issue is potentially explosive. Muslim leaders` claims that Israel dug a tunnel under Al Aksa compound led to clashes in September 1996 in which some 70 Palestinians and 16 Israelis were killed.

Four years later Israeli opposition leader, now Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, visited the plaza which for the Muslims is Al-Aksa area, or the Haram e-Sharif, and for the Jews the Temple Mount, their holiest site. Sharon did not enter any mosque, but his appearance sparked riots that launched the second intifada that so far cost the lives of some 4,750 Palestinians and Israelis.  At a press conference in Jerusalem, Tuesday, the Al Aksa Foundation presented a file and discs containing pictures and a film of 'Excavation being done underneath the Aksa Mosque.'

http://tinyurl.com/djcmy

Zvue 500 with 3.5-inch display, WiFi, CF, SD Posted Jan 4th 2006 8:00AM by Marc Perton Filed under: CES, Portable Video Handheld Entertainment has upgraded its line of Zvue portable media players with the Zvue 400 and 500, both of which include 3.5-inch, 320x240 displays, slots for both Compact Flash and Secure Digital cards, and compatibility with Microsoft's DRM for both audio and video. While the 400 is fairly basic, with 512MB of onboard storage, the 500 ups the specs to 1GB, and also adds WiFi, for quick downloading of media — or Media Snackingsm, as the Zvue people call it (and, yes, they do actually list Media Snacking as a service mark). No word on how you grab those snacks, since it's not clear whether the Zvue includes a browser or other software to find files to download. Both models are due out this quarter, with the 400 expected to go for about $225, and the 500 for about $300.

http://tinyurl.com/bc6v7

Knuckles RPG to help you learn Japanese Posted Jan 3rd 2006 6:45PM by Jordan Running Filed under: Windows I'm not sure why this game is called Knuckles in China Land, but it's a learning game for practicing your Japanese characters--Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji--or your Japanese, Indonesian, or German vocabulary. The game stars Knuckles from the Sonic the Hedgehog games (unlicensed, I'm sure) and takes the form of a traditional RPG, except that instead of fighting battles with monsters, you must master characters and vocabulary words. It comes with libraries which include thousands of characters and words, but if you want more it also has a Vocabulary Editor to add your own.

http://tinyurl.com/dfgpu

Top 20 web development links of 2005 Posted Jan 3rd 2006 5:45PM by Jordan Running Filed under: Design, Developer Alessandro Fulciniti at Web-Graphics has collected his top 20 bookmarks of 2005. They're all, of course, web development links with a focus on CSS and JavaScript with some design, typography, AJAX, and search engine optimization thrown in. Every one is a must-read for anyone doing web development in 2006.

http://tinyurl.com/ajme2

Make quick comics with StripGenerator Posted Jan 3rd 2006 4:30PM by Jordan Running Filed under: Design, Fun Neither history's first nor last comic strip generator, StripGenerator is still a fun way to send a message, kill some time, or jump-start your comic-writing career. With a slick Flash interface, a library of dozens of stylish characters and objects and an easy way to save and share the comics you build, all StripGenerator lacks is some color.

http://tinyurl.com/b9unq

Clipfire: Social shopping engine Posted Jan 3rd 2006 3:25PM by Jordan Running Filed under: Web services It was only a matter of time before someone combined a social links site like Digg with one of the web's favorite pastimes, shopping. Clipfire lets you "clip" good deals found on the web. Deals with lots of "clips" get promoted to the "Popular Deals" page. Sound familiar? It has a search function but notably missing are any sort of categories or tags that would make it easier to navigate.

http://tinyurl.com/76wd9

Pylize: Ditch PowerPoint for Python and HTML Posted Jan 3rd 2006 1:35PM by Jordan Running Filed under: Office, Open Source Who needs GUIs to create presentations? Not you, if you have Pylize. At least, that's the premise. Pylize is an app written in Python that will take a bit of HTML written by you and turn it into a PowerPoint-style presentation that can be viewed in any web browser. You define your presentation's slides and content in an HTML file, add a bit of style using its built-in CSS classes (or your own), then run Pylize and you'll get back a full-fledged standalone presentation. Interesting project and great for those who really want to get down into the guts of their presentations.

http://tinyurl.com/7557b

Share Your Most Dangerous Idea

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tuesday January 03, @11:27PM from the shhh-it's-too-dangerous-to-talk-about-here dept. GabrielF writes "Every year The Edge asks over 100 top scientists and thinkers a question, and the responses are fascinating and widely quoted. This year, psychologist Steven Pinker suggested they ask "What is your most dangerous idea?" The 117 respondents include Richard Dawkins, Freeman Dyson, Daniel Dennett, Jared Diamond -- and that's just the D's! As you might expect, the submissions are brilliant and very controversial."

http://tinyurl.com/cmsgl

Highway heaven or highway hell? A tangle of US tarmac has mathematicians waxing lyrical - so why do the locals want to pull it to pieces?  THE smell of cooking asphalt wafts across the queues of cars on Interstate-95. Seagulls screech overhead, cutting through the bass rumble of the trucks pulling out of the toll plaza as they make for the freeway. I hit the brakes as a Cadillac Escalade veers in front of me. A truck looms in my rear-view mirror, too close for comfort, but I escape into the middle lane as the toll booths disappear behind me. I'm aiming for an intersection, north-east of Baltimore, where I-95 crosses I-695, the beltway that encircles the city. Other drivers may not realise it but this intersection is a mathematical masterpiece. I'm here to pay homage. Dror Bar-Natan of the University of Toronto, Canada, was the first to point out its beauty. His website describes its symmetrical layout as "lovely". But it is the junction's topological properties that ring mathematicians' bell. In the spring issue of ...

http://tinyurl.com/bfd8k

Study: Impact of Cash Incentives on Driving  The Seattle Times has an article titled Do cash incentives alter driving habits? It is about a study in which people are basically given money to drive less. At the beginning of the experiment, each volunteer was given a certain amount of virtual cash; throughout the study their cars were tracked with GPS technology and they had to spend some of their virtual money to move around. The amount they had to pay depended on road-type (highway vs. city) and time of day (rush hour) so that certain trips were more expensive than others. "They can save money by not driving as much, by choosing less-congested highways, or by staying off the road at rush hour." The incentive part is that any virtual money left at the end of the experiment can be exchanged for real dollars.

http://tinyurl.com/9te4b

What's in the Water? Ask the National Tap Water Quality Database  If you’ve ever been curious to know what’s really in the water coming out of your tap, there is now a fun and user-friendly way to find out what may be poisoning you. The Environmental Working Group has created the National Tap Water Quality Database, the result of the largest ever evaluation of drinking-water contaminants. The database, 2.5 years in the making, looks at more than 22 million water quality tests and organizes the results such that people can search by city, state, or by contaminant, to see what’s in their water and what health issues are related to each substance. The scariest of their findings is that, of the 260 contaminants found in U.S. drinking water, more than half do not fall under any regulation at all. Among the unregulated are the auto fuel additive MTBE and jet fuel ingredient perchlorate, both of which can be found at my very own Los Angeles kitchen sink. :: National Tap Water Quality Database

http://tinyurl.com/beg5l

Architecture2030.org: New Website about Sustainability  We were perhaps less than charitable when the AIA announced its call for a 50% reduction in fossil fuel use- after all, it is primarily a group of volunteer architects working to improve their profession and the work that is produced by it. Similar initiatives are being started by others as well- Architecture2030.org is a new website started by Edward Mazria, a Santa Fe architect who wrote the Passive Solar Energy Book. He teaches, and is taking a slightly longer term approach: "in our professional architecture and planning schools, we should require the establishment of a mandatory, full-year, innovative, studio-based program which promotes creative problem-solving relevant to climate change—one which incorporates a deep understanding of the relationship between nature and design in all core courses."- most architects know very little about sustainability and you have to get'em while they're young. Great choices in case studies, good resource lists, we wish them well. ::Architecture2030.org via ::Archinect

http://tinyurl.com/9dxgt

A Torrent Search Engine Searcher Enter you're keywords, click on a torrent search engine and have Torrent Searcher show you the search results page. It's as simple as that to search a torrent indexing site with this torrent search engine searcher; Torrent Searcher. Torrent searching has never been so easy with Torrent Searcher. Torrent Searcher allows you to search the best torrent search engines on the net from one single spot. No more hassle with finding you're way onto a particular torrent site, whether you're looking for torrent search results or looking to navigate through the site, Torrent Searcher will take you to the site. Enter no keywords and click on a search engine name to view the homepage of the torrent indexing site. This torrent search engine searcher is also customizable. You can reorder the list of torrent search engines to you're specific needs or preferences. Just click and drag a torrent search engine site up or down the list of torrent search engines. You're reordered list of torrent search engines is saved by Torrent Searcher. So next time you visit the torrent search engine searcher the list will switch to the order you last chose. No need to register or anything, Torrent Searcher saves the list order on you're own computer. Talk about privacy. You can use Torrent Searcher to quickly search for the torrents you want, but there is more. Ever wanted to share a search results page with a friend? No problem as the Torrent Search Engine Searcher will construct and display the direct torrent search address to the torrent search results page you're viewing with Torrent Searcher. You can use the torrent search engine searcher from within your browser, using our search plug-ins. We currently support the Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer browsers. Click to install the Firefox Search Plugin or install Torrent Searcher into Internet Explorer (Ctrl+E to activate). When you're not using Torrent Searcher to search a dozen of the best torrent sites for the torrent you need, you can read up on the latest file sharing news. File Sharing Place's latest file sharing news headlines are displayed right here. Without any annoying pop-ups, ad-ware, spyware, virus or Trojan installers; in fact without any advertisement at all, this non-profit torrent search engine searcher is you're best torrent search resource site yet! Maximizing your torrent search experience with no need to install anything but freely available 24/7 is the torrent search engine searcher: Torrent Searcher.

http://tinyurl.com/74ryp

Plasma thruster tested for Mars mission  Technology invented by ANU physicists could see expeditions to Mars become a reality, with the European Space Agency (ESA) announcing it will begin full-scale trials next year.  The Helicon Double Layer Thruster (HDLT) technology to be used by the ESA was developed by Dr Christine Charles and Professor Rod Boswell from the Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering at ANU.  The technology was recently verified at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, one of the great research centres in France, under a contract from Dr Roger Walker of the Advanced Concept Team of ESA. The French group was lead by Dr Pascal Chabert who has been collaborating with the ANU group for nearly a decade and has spent many months working with Dr Charles and Professor Boswell.  The HDLT uses solar electricity from the sun to create a magnetic field through which hydrogen is passed to make a beam of plasma, powering ships through space. 

http://tinyurl.com/ak4lc

AllPeers Is The FireFox “Killer App”  I’ve had a chance to talk to AllPeers founders Cedric Maloux and Matthew Gertner. This company is set to take the world by storm. In my opinon this single firefox extension will massively increase the attractiveness of that already popular browser, drawing more millions away from embattled Internet Explorer.  AllPeers is a simple, persistent buddy list in the browser. Initially, interaction with those buddies will be limited to discovering and sharing files - If you choose to, you can share any file on your network with one or more of your friends. They will be able to see what files you choose to share (even getting an RSS feed of new files you include), and with a single click download it to their own hard drive.  AllPeers will work even when the sharer is offline - AllPeers is a bittorent client, and will allow files to be pulled from multiple sources. When downloading, the file may be grabbed partially or fully from others you have shared it with (or who shared it with you). So a user just clicks on a file, and waits for it to eventually download. Screen shots can be viewed here.

http://tinyurl.com/bu2h7

High Speed Photography  This is the High Speed Photography group (aka HSP). A place to discuss and share tips about technique, equipment, and photographs.  Harold "Doc" Edgerton is widely considered by many as the father of high-speed photography. He invented the strobe which is the foundation for most high speed still imaging today. More information about him can be found here.  Pool images: Any high speed captures of extremely fast events which cannot be seen by the naked eye. Please only submit your own photographs (no 3D renderings, drawings or other people's images grabbed from the internet).  Photo Tags: Just add highspeed to any image you add to the group pool. If you forget then an admin will add it for you free of charge :)  To maintain the quality of the images pool, please only submit reasonably sharp images. Heavily motion blurred photographs are not generally considered HSP.  Note: Lightning photography should be placed in the lightning group.

http://tinyurl.com/89z2u