Surfing The Web At 30,000 Feet
I’m on a Virgin America flight about an hour west of Washington DC as I chat with a friend via instant messaging, update my Facebook page, send little notes on Twitter, watch streaming web video and update my blog. I’m even filing this column from the air. It went up on the Web before I landed. This is the first time I’ve surfed the Web from the air, which I guess makes me a Virgin in-flight WiFi user. The cost is $9.95 for the entire flight and the service is great. Considering that this is a six-hour flight, I could stream 3 movies before reaching San Francisco. The service is offered by GoGo which is also on American flights between New York and San Francisco and Los Angeles and Miami, as well as on some Delta flights. Unlike the live satellite TV programming offered on Virgin, JetBlue and a few other airlines, the Internet service is relayed from ground stations across the continental United States. According to the company’s Web site, “with nothing but air between these towers and your plane, you’re always getting the best connection” and so far that seems to be true. I’m getting 1.5 mbps download speed which is better than many DSL services. The bandwidth is good enough for me to have sampled some news videos on CBSNews.com, a movie on NetFlix.com and the Colbert Report on Hulu.com. It’s fast enough for Skype but, according to GoGo’s website, voice calls are not allowed. I tried Skype (before reading about the prohibition) and the person I called could hear me, but his voice was garbled. I did this as an experiment, but even if it worked, I'd avoid it for all but very short and urgent calls because it would distract fellow passengers. Speaking of distracting, there are some etiquette “rules” that GoGo suggests passengers follow. They ask you to mute the sound or use headphones, avoid voice calls and “be an angel” and not visit sites that might shock your neighbors. In other words, don’t risk exposing others to porn. Bloomberg has reported that American Airlines flight attendants asked company to filter porn from the service. As far as I can tell, the service is not currently blocking any content on Virgin America but - via a live chat from the air - a Gogo representative on the ground told me they are now filtering content on American Airlines. So far, this has been a first-class experience even though I'm stuffed into an economy seat. Mostly, it's a way to make time fly on what would otherwise be a pretty boring trek across the continental United States.
William Gallas faces end of the road at Arsenal
William Gallas wants to leave Arsenal. The France defender has become disillusioned with life at the Emirates Stadium since he was stripped of the captaincy last month for criticising his team-mates. He was dropped from the squad for the 3-0 defeat away to Manchester City on November 22 and replaced as captain by Cesc Fàbregas two days later. Although he put a brave face on the demotion, he is still angry about the way that he has been treated.
Juventus, AC Milan and Paris Saint-Germain are prepared to offer the 31-year-old defender an escape route out of London, but none of them can afford to match his Arsenal wages of £90,000 a week. Gallas believes that he was humiliated by Arsène Wenger and that the manager overreacted by stripping him of the captaincy and fining him two weeks’ wages for comments he made in an interview to publicise the publication of his autobiography in France.
Gallas has few friends in the Arsenal dressing-room and has become increasingly isolated since Thierry Henry was allowed to join Barcelona in June last year. Henry was his closest friend at the club and since the France forward moved to Spain, Gallas has fallen out with team-mates such as Fàbregas, Robin van Persie, Theo Walcott and Samir Nasri.
The distance between Gallas and the rest of the squad was highlighted during the warm-up before the 1-1 draw away to Middlesbrough on Saturday, when the defender ignored instructions from Pat Rice, the assistant manager, to join the other players in a huddle.
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Gallas’s relationship with Wenger has also become strained and the manager admitted this week that taking the captaincy away from Gallas was the hardest thing he has had to do during his managerial career.
If Gallas does leave the Emirates Stadium next month he will miss out on the chance of playing with Eduardo da Silva again. The Croatia striker played for the first time in ten months on Tuesday, for the first half of the reserve-team’s 2-0 victory over the Portsmouth reserve side, and he is confident that he will be ready for first-team action in two weeks despite a slight hamstring strain. “I just want to play like I did before,” Eduardo said. “Maybe I can be better. At the moment I need more training. I need more hard games but I think I will be back pretty quickly. I am hoping to be back for the national team in February against Romania and back in the Arsenal first team by the new year.”
Doctors feared that the Brazil-born 25-year-old would not play again after he fractured his left fibula and dislocated an ankle during the 2-2 draw away to Birmingham City in February. “In training everyone is very careful with him,” Wenger said. “So it is better he goes into a game where people do not care about him and he discovers if he is strong enough to deal with it. For him to be back playing in the first team will not be a physical problem, it will be more a psychological hurdle to go back into the fight.”
Arsenal are also likely to be boosted next month by the return of Tomas Rosicky. The Czech Republic midfield player — who has made only 61 first-team appearances since moving to London from Borussia Dortmund for £6.8 million in May 2006 — has been out of action since January with a persistent hamstring injury that did not respond to treatment until he had surgery last month. “We have to assess him to see how he has progressed and he should start training slowly again this week,” Wenger said. “First it will be a build-up of his strength to get him outside and run a little bit at the beginning of January if it all goes well.”
Juventus, AC Milan and Paris Saint-Germain are prepared to offer the 31-year-old defender an escape route out of London, but none of them can afford to match his Arsenal wages of £90,000 a week. Gallas believes that he was humiliated by Arsène Wenger and that the manager overreacted by stripping him of the captaincy and fining him two weeks’ wages for comments he made in an interview to publicise the publication of his autobiography in France.
Gallas has few friends in the Arsenal dressing-room and has become increasingly isolated since Thierry Henry was allowed to join Barcelona in June last year. Henry was his closest friend at the club and since the France forward moved to Spain, Gallas has fallen out with team-mates such as Fàbregas, Robin van Persie, Theo Walcott and Samir Nasri.
The distance between Gallas and the rest of the squad was highlighted during the warm-up before the 1-1 draw away to Middlesbrough on Saturday, when the defender ignored instructions from Pat Rice, the assistant manager, to join the other players in a huddle.
Related Links
Arsenal ripe for Usmanov takeover
Gallas and Bendtner may quit Arsenal
Wenger heaps praise on outstanding Gallas
Gallas’s relationship with Wenger has also become strained and the manager admitted this week that taking the captaincy away from Gallas was the hardest thing he has had to do during his managerial career.
If Gallas does leave the Emirates Stadium next month he will miss out on the chance of playing with Eduardo da Silva again. The Croatia striker played for the first time in ten months on Tuesday, for the first half of the reserve-team’s 2-0 victory over the Portsmouth reserve side, and he is confident that he will be ready for first-team action in two weeks despite a slight hamstring strain. “I just want to play like I did before,” Eduardo said. “Maybe I can be better. At the moment I need more training. I need more hard games but I think I will be back pretty quickly. I am hoping to be back for the national team in February against Romania and back in the Arsenal first team by the new year.”
Doctors feared that the Brazil-born 25-year-old would not play again after he fractured his left fibula and dislocated an ankle during the 2-2 draw away to Birmingham City in February. “In training everyone is very careful with him,” Wenger said. “So it is better he goes into a game where people do not care about him and he discovers if he is strong enough to deal with it. For him to be back playing in the first team will not be a physical problem, it will be more a psychological hurdle to go back into the fight.”
Arsenal are also likely to be boosted next month by the return of Tomas Rosicky. The Czech Republic midfield player — who has made only 61 first-team appearances since moving to London from Borussia Dortmund for £6.8 million in May 2006 — has been out of action since January with a persistent hamstring injury that did not respond to treatment until he had surgery last month. “We have to assess him to see how he has progressed and he should start training slowly again this week,” Wenger said. “First it will be a build-up of his strength to get him outside and run a little bit at the beginning of January if it all goes well.”
Lawyers turn to Facebook to serve legal papers
Lawyers in Australia expect the social network site Facebook to become a new way of tracking down defendants after a landmark court ruling.
The Supreme Court in Australia's capital Canberra has ruled that Facebook is a sufficient way of serving legal documents to defendants who cannot be found.
The case surrounded a couple who defaulted on a loan, but who couldn't be found.
"We couldn't find the defendants personally after many attempts so we thought we would try and find them on Facebook," lawyer Mark McCormack said.
"We did a public search based on the email address we had and the defendants Facebook page appeared."
He said that was enough to convince the court, which found Facebook was a sufficient way of communicating legal papers when it is the plaintiff's responsibility to personally deliver documents.
The Supreme Court in Australia's capital Canberra has ruled that Facebook is a sufficient way of serving legal documents to defendants who cannot be found.
The case surrounded a couple who defaulted on a loan, but who couldn't be found.
"We couldn't find the defendants personally after many attempts so we thought we would try and find them on Facebook," lawyer Mark McCormack said.
"We did a public search based on the email address we had and the defendants Facebook page appeared."
He said that was enough to convince the court, which found Facebook was a sufficient way of communicating legal papers when it is the plaintiff's responsibility to personally deliver documents.
Akon Pleads Guilty To Tossing Fan Off Stage In 2007
Singer is fined $350 and sentenced to 65 hours of community service. For the next year, Akon will have to split his time between rocking the stage and preaching about the evils of violence and the gang life. The "Troublemaker" singer appeared in court in Fishkill, New York, on Wednesday morning (December 17) to plead guilty for throwing a teenage fan off the stage at a concert in the summer of 2007, according to the Poughkeepsie Journal.
Akon reached a deal to plead guilty to second-degree harassment, a violation, instead of the more serious charge of endangering the welfare of a child. In December 2007, Akon had originally pleaded not guilty to the charges that were filed after the singer tossed 15-year-old fan Anthony C. Smith from the stage at Dutchess Stadium on June 3, 2007, during the annual KFEST summer concert. In the incident, which was caught on video by fans, Akon picked up Smith and tossed him off the stage during his performance.
The singer was assessed a $350 fine and ordered to serve 65 hours of anti-gang and anti-violence community service that he most complete before June. If he gets arrested within the next 12 months, he will have to reappear in the Fishkill court.
Dressed in a gray suit, powder-blue shirt, gray tie and gray overcoat, Akon was seated four rows behind Smith and his parents in the courtroom during the proceeding and was confronted by Smith's father after the matter was settled.
As the teen was leaving the courthouse, he reportedly walked up to the singer and shook his hand, saying, "Thanks a lot." Akon repeatedly apologized to the boy, but was interrupted by the boy's father, William Smith, who said, "You threw my son off the stage."
Smiling, Akon addressed the teen, "We never had a chance to talk."
While Akon would not comment to the paper about the case, the singer's attorney, Andrea Zellan, handed out a prepared statement as she and her client left the court.
"We are pleased that the case has been resolved," the statement said, "and Akon looks forward to putting this unfortunate incident behind him."
Akon reached a deal to plead guilty to second-degree harassment, a violation, instead of the more serious charge of endangering the welfare of a child. In December 2007, Akon had originally pleaded not guilty to the charges that were filed after the singer tossed 15-year-old fan Anthony C. Smith from the stage at Dutchess Stadium on June 3, 2007, during the annual KFEST summer concert. In the incident, which was caught on video by fans, Akon picked up Smith and tossed him off the stage during his performance.
The singer was assessed a $350 fine and ordered to serve 65 hours of anti-gang and anti-violence community service that he most complete before June. If he gets arrested within the next 12 months, he will have to reappear in the Fishkill court.
Dressed in a gray suit, powder-blue shirt, gray tie and gray overcoat, Akon was seated four rows behind Smith and his parents in the courtroom during the proceeding and was confronted by Smith's father after the matter was settled.
As the teen was leaving the courthouse, he reportedly walked up to the singer and shook his hand, saying, "Thanks a lot." Akon repeatedly apologized to the boy, but was interrupted by the boy's father, William Smith, who said, "You threw my son off the stage."
Smiling, Akon addressed the teen, "We never had a chance to talk."
While Akon would not comment to the paper about the case, the singer's attorney, Andrea Zellan, handed out a prepared statement as she and her client left the court.
"We are pleased that the case has been resolved," the statement said, "and Akon looks forward to putting this unfortunate incident behind him."
Facebook: More Than 160 Million Served
The Inside Facebook blog posted some astounding growth statistics this week for the social networking site. For one thing, Facebook is growing faster than the population in China. Through it all, the company has managed to keep its systems up and running and not suffer any growing pains outages that have often plagued fast growth start-ups.
The independent blog, not published by Facebook, shows the company's growth in recent weeks has soared to more than 600,000 new users signing up every day, up from about 300,000 to 400,000 a day just a few months earlier.
"If Facebook continues at this rate, it could add up to 20 million new users in December and reach 200 million active users by March," Justin Smith, editor of Inside Facebook writes.
The traffic measurement site Compete shows that Facebook is rapidly closing on MySpace for unique traffic as Facebook grew 69.5 percent this year and MySpace shrunk 14.5 percent this year.
Not lost in translation
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What's truly remarkable is that more than 70 percent of Facebook's users are from outside the United States. Brandee Barker, a spokesperson for the company, credits this rise in foreign users to a program begun at the beginning of the year to add translations to Facebook.
The program was a wiki-like effort in which non-English speakers could contribute their translations to Facebook content and menus. No one person could make changes. Every contribution had to be an agreed upon by multiple contributors.
"That really allowed them to leverage their user base, and now they are seeing a large growth in international users," said Ray Valdes, analyst with Gartner. He thinks this method of letting users handle the translation can be used elsewhere. "Certainly other sites should do it. Wikipedia was the poster child for that and Facebook has adapted it to their scenario. Other companies can adapt it to their requirements as well."
Facebook's users are contributing more than just translations, they are contributing content. Lots and lots of content. Smith gave the following statistics:
13 million users update their statuses at least once each day
2.5 million users become fans of Pages each day
700 million photos are uploaded to the site each month, with more than 10 billion cumulative
4 million videos are uploaded each month
15 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared each month
2 million events created each month
19 million active groups exist on the site
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Facebook has released an online demographics tool designed to help further explore the site’s growth and latest statistics.
This kind of growth could lead to tremendous strain on the site's servers, so the company is beefing up its infrastructure. Facebook just recently opened its second datacenter, this one based on the east coast. Its first datacenter was in San Francisco. It's rather remarkable that Facebook has managed its fast-growing membership so well given that it can take one to two years to open a datacenter during which time it may have added a few hundred million more members.
"They are managing quite well compared to others," said Valdes. "I've gone to other social networks that had reliability or availability issues, brownouts, blackouts, what have you. With Facebook there are the occasional glitches, but the site seems to function well, even though the error rate has gone up a bit."
Facebook
The independent blog, not published by Facebook, shows the company's growth in recent weeks has soared to more than 600,000 new users signing up every day, up from about 300,000 to 400,000 a day just a few months earlier.
"If Facebook continues at this rate, it could add up to 20 million new users in December and reach 200 million active users by March," Justin Smith, editor of Inside Facebook writes.
The traffic measurement site Compete shows that Facebook is rapidly closing on MySpace for unique traffic as Facebook grew 69.5 percent this year and MySpace shrunk 14.5 percent this year.
Not lost in translation
RELATED ARTICLES
Facebook Scrambles to Squash WormFacebook Eyes Enterprise MarketFacebook Tops MySpace as Social Sites Globalize
For more stories on this topic:
What's truly remarkable is that more than 70 percent of Facebook's users are from outside the United States. Brandee Barker, a spokesperson for the company, credits this rise in foreign users to a program begun at the beginning of the year to add translations to Facebook.
The program was a wiki-like effort in which non-English speakers could contribute their translations to Facebook content and menus. No one person could make changes. Every contribution had to be an agreed upon by multiple contributors.
"That really allowed them to leverage their user base, and now they are seeing a large growth in international users," said Ray Valdes, analyst with Gartner. He thinks this method of letting users handle the translation can be used elsewhere. "Certainly other sites should do it. Wikipedia was the poster child for that and Facebook has adapted it to their scenario. Other companies can adapt it to their requirements as well."
Facebook's users are contributing more than just translations, they are contributing content. Lots and lots of content. Smith gave the following statistics:
13 million users update their statuses at least once each day
2.5 million users become fans of Pages each day
700 million photos are uploaded to the site each month, with more than 10 billion cumulative
4 million videos are uploaded each month
15 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared each month
2 million events created each month
19 million active groups exist on the site
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Facebook has released an online demographics tool designed to help further explore the site’s growth and latest statistics.
This kind of growth could lead to tremendous strain on the site's servers, so the company is beefing up its infrastructure. Facebook just recently opened its second datacenter, this one based on the east coast. Its first datacenter was in San Francisco. It's rather remarkable that Facebook has managed its fast-growing membership so well given that it can take one to two years to open a datacenter during which time it may have added a few hundred million more members.
"They are managing quite well compared to others," said Valdes. "I've gone to other social networks that had reliability or availability issues, brownouts, blackouts, what have you. With Facebook there are the occasional glitches, but the site seems to function well, even though the error rate has gone up a bit."
Saturn's moon has 'ice volcanoes'
Titan, the haze-shrouded moon of Saturn, displays tantalising evidence of ice volcanoes.
Two regions of Titan have been seen recently, by the Cassini spacecraft, to undergo clear changes in brightness.
This activity, and radar images hinting at flow-like structures, suggest the presence of volcanoes, scientists say.
Rather than erupting molten rock, Titan's "cryovolcanoes" are thought to ooze a slurry made of water ice, ammonia and methane.
There are suggestions that these frigid lava flows could be as much as 200m thick.
"Cryovolcanism is a process that many people have modelled in theory and shown to be viable in the outer Solar System on an object of Titan's size," said Bob Nelson from the US space agency Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Researchers working on the Cassini mission argued their case here at the American Geophysical Union's Fall Meeting.
Reflectance glory
Early flybys of Titan by the US-European spacecraft spotted intriguing surface features that suggested the presence of cryovolcanism, but the thick atmosphere that shrouds this enigmatic world has always made definitive statements tricky.
The evidence, however, is mounting.
Cassini scientists can now point to distinct changes in brightness and reflectance at two separate locations in Titan's equatorial region.
The changes were picked up by Cassini's Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer instrument on flybys from July 2004 to March 2006.
In one of the two regions, the reflectance of the surface surged upward and remained higher than expected. In the other region, the reflectance shot up, but then declined.
The Cassini spacecraft spotted the suspected volcanoes in different regions
Cassini's radar - an instrument that can pierce the thick atmosphere to map the surface, at low resolution - sees lobe-like features at the two locations. Their thickness, about 200m, is consistent with a cyrovolcanic flow interpretation.
"These flows would come out as a thick slurry," said Dr Rosaly Lopes, a Cassini radar team investigation scientist. "They can be thick because cryomagma would be viscous, similar to lava flows on Earth."
Scientists say they also have evidence that ammonia frost is sometimes present at one of the two sites. The ammonia was evident only at times when the region was inferred to be active.
"Ammonia is a material that many thought would be in Titan's interior but not found on the surface," explained Dr Nelson.
"So the finding of ammonia on the surface for temporary periods of time strongly implies materials from the interior are being transported and fused on to the surface."
Sceptical view
Titan's thick atmosphere makes observing the planet's surface difficult
Scientists like the idea of cryovolcanism because it is one way to explain why so much methane is retained in Titan's atmosphere.
Without some means of replenishment, the moon's original methane content should have been destroyed long ago by the Sun's ultraviolet light.
Not all scientists are convinced by the latest assessment, however.
Jeffrey Moore, a Nasa planetary geologist independent of the Cassini mission, told the meeting: "The flow-like features we see on the surface may just be icy debris that has been lubricated by methane rain and transported down-slope into sinuous piles like mudflows."
Dr Nelson countered: "Scepticism is part of the evolution of a scientific finding but logic dictates that we start looking at things in certain ways when certain patterns start falling together."
Two regions of Titan have been seen recently, by the Cassini spacecraft, to undergo clear changes in brightness.
This activity, and radar images hinting at flow-like structures, suggest the presence of volcanoes, scientists say.
Rather than erupting molten rock, Titan's "cryovolcanoes" are thought to ooze a slurry made of water ice, ammonia and methane.
There are suggestions that these frigid lava flows could be as much as 200m thick.
"Cryovolcanism is a process that many people have modelled in theory and shown to be viable in the outer Solar System on an object of Titan's size," said Bob Nelson from the US space agency Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Researchers working on the Cassini mission argued their case here at the American Geophysical Union's Fall Meeting.
Reflectance glory
Early flybys of Titan by the US-European spacecraft spotted intriguing surface features that suggested the presence of cryovolcanism, but the thick atmosphere that shrouds this enigmatic world has always made definitive statements tricky.
The evidence, however, is mounting.
Cassini scientists can now point to distinct changes in brightness and reflectance at two separate locations in Titan's equatorial region.
The changes were picked up by Cassini's Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer instrument on flybys from July 2004 to March 2006.
In one of the two regions, the reflectance of the surface surged upward and remained higher than expected. In the other region, the reflectance shot up, but then declined.
The Cassini spacecraft spotted the suspected volcanoes in different regions
Cassini's radar - an instrument that can pierce the thick atmosphere to map the surface, at low resolution - sees lobe-like features at the two locations. Their thickness, about 200m, is consistent with a cyrovolcanic flow interpretation.
"These flows would come out as a thick slurry," said Dr Rosaly Lopes, a Cassini radar team investigation scientist. "They can be thick because cryomagma would be viscous, similar to lava flows on Earth."
Scientists say they also have evidence that ammonia frost is sometimes present at one of the two sites. The ammonia was evident only at times when the region was inferred to be active.
"Ammonia is a material that many thought would be in Titan's interior but not found on the surface," explained Dr Nelson.
"So the finding of ammonia on the surface for temporary periods of time strongly implies materials from the interior are being transported and fused on to the surface."
Sceptical view
Titan's thick atmosphere makes observing the planet's surface difficult
Scientists like the idea of cryovolcanism because it is one way to explain why so much methane is retained in Titan's atmosphere.
Without some means of replenishment, the moon's original methane content should have been destroyed long ago by the Sun's ultraviolet light.
Not all scientists are convinced by the latest assessment, however.
Jeffrey Moore, a Nasa planetary geologist independent of the Cassini mission, told the meeting: "The flow-like features we see on the surface may just be icy debris that has been lubricated by methane rain and transported down-slope into sinuous piles like mudflows."
Dr Nelson countered: "Scepticism is part of the evolution of a scientific finding but logic dictates that we start looking at things in certain ways when certain patterns start falling together."
"Bizarre" New Dinosaur: Giant Raptor Found in Argentina
Scientists have discovered what they say is a completely unexpected new giant dinosaur that lived 70 million years ago in Argentina.
At 16.5 to 21 feet long (5 to 6.5 meters) long, depending on its tail size, Austroraptor cabazai is among the largest of the slender, carnivorous, two-legged dinosaurs called raptors, said Fernando Novas, the lead researcher behind the discovery.
Dinosaur Discovered in Patagonia--Named "Small Head" (April 5, 2004)
"Flesh & Bone: A New Generation of Scientists Bring Dinosaurs Back to Life" in National Geographic Magazine (March 2003)
New Dinosaur Species Discovered in Argentina (February 23, 2005)
The dinosaur's incomplete skeleton—including head, neck, back, and foot bones—was extracted from rocks in the far-southern Patagonia region.
Novas and colleagues were able to virtually reconstruct Austroraptor's complete skeleton, by using the dinosaur's closest relatives as references, said Novas, who received funding for his work from the National Geographic Society's Proceedings of the Royal Society of London.
Seventy million years ago Patagonia was a series of plains crossed by rivers filled with fish and turtles, whose fossils were found alongside Austroraptor, Novas said.
Living in this fertile land alongside duck-billed herbivores such as titanosaurs and hadrosaurs, Austroraptor preyed on larger animals than its smaller relatives, thanks to its increased heft and girth, he said.
Turns History Upside-Down
Because paleontologists have found mostly smaller crow- and turkey-size raptors in South America, the new find turns the evolutionary history of raptors—northern and southern—upside-down, said Novas, who is based out of Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales in Buenos Aires.
At 16.5 to 21 feet long (5 to 6.5 meters) long, depending on its tail size, Austroraptor cabazai is among the largest of the slender, carnivorous, two-legged dinosaurs called raptors, said Fernando Novas, the lead researcher behind the discovery.
Dinosaur Discovered in Patagonia--Named "Small Head" (April 5, 2004)
"Flesh & Bone: A New Generation of Scientists Bring Dinosaurs Back to Life" in National Geographic Magazine (March 2003)
New Dinosaur Species Discovered in Argentina (February 23, 2005)
The dinosaur's incomplete skeleton—including head, neck, back, and foot bones—was extracted from rocks in the far-southern Patagonia region.
Novas and colleagues were able to virtually reconstruct Austroraptor's complete skeleton, by using the dinosaur's closest relatives as references, said Novas, who received funding for his work from the National Geographic Society's Proceedings of the Royal Society of London.
Seventy million years ago Patagonia was a series of plains crossed by rivers filled with fish and turtles, whose fossils were found alongside Austroraptor, Novas said.
Living in this fertile land alongside duck-billed herbivores such as titanosaurs and hadrosaurs, Austroraptor preyed on larger animals than its smaller relatives, thanks to its increased heft and girth, he said.
Turns History Upside-Down
Because paleontologists have found mostly smaller crow- and turkey-size raptors in South America, the new find turns the evolutionary history of raptors—northern and southern—upside-down, said Novas, who is based out of Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales in Buenos Aires.
Personalized spam rising sharply, study finds
Yes, guys, those spam e-mails for Viagra or baldness cream just might be directed to you personally. So, too, are many of the other crafty come-ons clogging inboxes, trying to lure us to fake Web sites so criminals can steal our personal information.
A new study by Cisco Systems Inc. found an alarming increase in the amount of personalized spam, which online identity thieves create using stolen lists of e-mail addresses or other poached data about their victims, such as where they went to school or which bank they use.
Unlike traditional spam, most of which is blocked by e-mail filters, personalized spam, known as "spear phishing" messages, often sail through unmolested. They're sent in smaller chunks, and often come from accounts the criminals have set up at reputable Web-based e-mail services. Some of the messages are expertly crafted, linking to beautifully designed Web sites that are bogus or immediately install malicious programs.
Cisco's annual security study found that spam is growing quickly — nearly 200 billion spam messages are now sent each day, double the volume in 2007 — and that targeted attacks are also rising sharply.
More than 0.4 percent of all spam sent in September were targeted attacks, Cisco found. That might sound low, but since 90 percent of all e-mails sent worldwide are spam, this means 800 million messages a day are attempts are spear phishing. A year ago, targeted attacks with personalized messages were less than 0.1 percent of all spam.
The latest attacks include text-message spam, e-mails trying to trick business owners into coughing up credentials for their Google advertising accounts, or personalized "whaling" e-mails to executives claiming that their businesses are under investigation by the FBI or that there's a problem with their personal bank account.
As the world's largest maker of networking gear, Cisco is in a unique position to study the traffic flowing through its customers' networks, which include the biggest Internet providers and corporations. The latest study was based in part on the company's ability to monitor 30 percent of all Web and e-mail traffic through its hardware and software and a network of companies that contribute data.
A new study by Cisco Systems Inc. found an alarming increase in the amount of personalized spam, which online identity thieves create using stolen lists of e-mail addresses or other poached data about their victims, such as where they went to school or which bank they use.
Unlike traditional spam, most of which is blocked by e-mail filters, personalized spam, known as "spear phishing" messages, often sail through unmolested. They're sent in smaller chunks, and often come from accounts the criminals have set up at reputable Web-based e-mail services. Some of the messages are expertly crafted, linking to beautifully designed Web sites that are bogus or immediately install malicious programs.
Cisco's annual security study found that spam is growing quickly — nearly 200 billion spam messages are now sent each day, double the volume in 2007 — and that targeted attacks are also rising sharply.
More than 0.4 percent of all spam sent in September were targeted attacks, Cisco found. That might sound low, but since 90 percent of all e-mails sent worldwide are spam, this means 800 million messages a day are attempts are spear phishing. A year ago, targeted attacks with personalized messages were less than 0.1 percent of all spam.
The latest attacks include text-message spam, e-mails trying to trick business owners into coughing up credentials for their Google advertising accounts, or personalized "whaling" e-mails to executives claiming that their businesses are under investigation by the FBI or that there's a problem with their personal bank account.
As the world's largest maker of networking gear, Cisco is in a unique position to study the traffic flowing through its customers' networks, which include the biggest Internet providers and corporations. The latest study was based in part on the company's ability to monitor 30 percent of all Web and e-mail traffic through its hardware and software and a network of companies that contribute data.
U.S. squirrels pushing relatives out of Britain
Across northern England and Scotland, a do-or-die battle is being waged against an aggressive American invader.
Britons are desperately trying to stem a northern march by the American gray squirrel, which threatens Britain's native red squirrel by destroying its habitat and spreading disease.
The situation is so dire that the government and wildlife groups have called trappers and hunters, scientists, Prince Charles — and even chefs with squirrel recipes — into a campaign against the grays. They've created sanctuaries for the red squirrels and enlisted volunteer spotters to look out for the destructive invader.
"We must act," Scotland's environment minister, Michael Russell, warned last week as he announced a three-year, $2.16 million program to try to halt the grays.
"The red is now endangered. We have only a short time to save the red squirrel from the brink of extinction," he says.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Britain England Scotland Britons London-based Prince Charles Ice Age Michael Russell Devon Spiller Victorians Beatrix Potter
Red squirrels will disappear in 10 to 15 years if nothing is done, says Rachel Walton, a wildlife officer with Save Our Squirrels, or SoS, one of more than 50 groups involved in the fight and supported by Prince Charles.
"We've got to be very aggressive in protecting them," she says. "We don't have much time left."
The British have their forebears to blame for the situation.
Miles Barne, chairman of the London-based European Squirrel Initiative, says Victorians brought the American gray species to England in 1876. Scots brought them over as a novelty shortly thereafter.
"The Victorians thought they would be a nice addition to their forests," he says.
Wrong. The gray squirrel, which is almost double the size of the native red squirrel, turned out to be hearty and lethal.
"They're great big bully boys," Barne says of the gray squirrels. "Reds are different. The red is a nervous creature and becomes terrorized by their (grays') aggression."
The gray squirrel wins out in the competition for food and habitat, he says. Grays can eat unripe nuts and berries; the reds cannot digest those until they're ripe. That leaves little food for the red squirrels.
Worse, though, is a squirrel pox carried by the grays brought to England. It doesn't harm the gray squirrel but is lethal to the red squirrel. The disease has wiped out the red squirrels in southern and central England and threatens the remaining reds in three counties that border Scotland and Scotland itself.
About 120,000 red squirrels remain, and 75% of them are in Scotland, SoS estimates. In comparison, the grays number 2.5 million to 5 million.
Although scientists are working on a vaccine to immunize red squirrels against the pox, Walton says that's 10 years away and "could be too late."
Likewise, development of a contraceptive that could be put out as bait for gray squirrels to halt their breeding "is tricky," she says. Any contraceptive or baiting could be eaten by the reds. "We're not advocating a massive cull across Britain," Walton says, "only in areas or buffer zones where there are reds."
The groups and volunteers monitor for any incursion by the gray squirrel into the buffer zones and preserves that have been created. When a gray is spotted there, the call goes out to trappers and hunters.
They're finding a market for the grays.
Simon Spiller, owner of the Otterton Mill restaurant in Devon, in southwest England, added gray squirrel to his menu — to draw attention to the plight of red squirrels and to reintroduce Britons to squirrel meat.
Among the recipes: Colonial Squirrel Kebab, and Squirrel and Leek Fricasee.
"It's halfway between wild boar and pheasant," Spiller says of the taste. "It's got lower fat and higher mineral content. It's also affordable."
Spiller launched "Squirrel Direct," a service to deliver gray squirrel meat throughout the country. The price: about $7.50 per squirrel wholesale; $12 retail, skinned or unskinned.
Celebrity British chef Heston Blumenthal was one of his customers and plans a squirrel recipe for his TV series next year, Spiller says.
"We don't have anything against the American squirrel," Spiller says. "We're just trying to protect the red squirrel and highlight the benefit of eating game."
There's more at stake in protecting the red than just holding onto an animal that has been here since the Ice Age, Walton says.
"We'd be losing an icon," she says.
Red squirrels hold a special place in Britons' hearts, since children's author Beatrix Potter wrote The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin in 1903.
In the book — Potter's second after The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin is threatened by an old owl that plans to skin him. Nutkin survives, but barely. He loses much of his tail.
Britons such as Walton hope the country's remaining reds are as lucky and survive, too.
Britons are desperately trying to stem a northern march by the American gray squirrel, which threatens Britain's native red squirrel by destroying its habitat and spreading disease.
The situation is so dire that the government and wildlife groups have called trappers and hunters, scientists, Prince Charles — and even chefs with squirrel recipes — into a campaign against the grays. They've created sanctuaries for the red squirrels and enlisted volunteer spotters to look out for the destructive invader.
"We must act," Scotland's environment minister, Michael Russell, warned last week as he announced a three-year, $2.16 million program to try to halt the grays.
"The red is now endangered. We have only a short time to save the red squirrel from the brink of extinction," he says.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Britain England Scotland Britons London-based Prince Charles Ice Age Michael Russell Devon Spiller Victorians Beatrix Potter
Red squirrels will disappear in 10 to 15 years if nothing is done, says Rachel Walton, a wildlife officer with Save Our Squirrels, or SoS, one of more than 50 groups involved in the fight and supported by Prince Charles.
"We've got to be very aggressive in protecting them," she says. "We don't have much time left."
The British have their forebears to blame for the situation.
Miles Barne, chairman of the London-based European Squirrel Initiative, says Victorians brought the American gray species to England in 1876. Scots brought them over as a novelty shortly thereafter.
"The Victorians thought they would be a nice addition to their forests," he says.
Wrong. The gray squirrel, which is almost double the size of the native red squirrel, turned out to be hearty and lethal.
"They're great big bully boys," Barne says of the gray squirrels. "Reds are different. The red is a nervous creature and becomes terrorized by their (grays') aggression."
The gray squirrel wins out in the competition for food and habitat, he says. Grays can eat unripe nuts and berries; the reds cannot digest those until they're ripe. That leaves little food for the red squirrels.
Worse, though, is a squirrel pox carried by the grays brought to England. It doesn't harm the gray squirrel but is lethal to the red squirrel. The disease has wiped out the red squirrels in southern and central England and threatens the remaining reds in three counties that border Scotland and Scotland itself.
About 120,000 red squirrels remain, and 75% of them are in Scotland, SoS estimates. In comparison, the grays number 2.5 million to 5 million.
Although scientists are working on a vaccine to immunize red squirrels against the pox, Walton says that's 10 years away and "could be too late."
Likewise, development of a contraceptive that could be put out as bait for gray squirrels to halt their breeding "is tricky," she says. Any contraceptive or baiting could be eaten by the reds. "We're not advocating a massive cull across Britain," Walton says, "only in areas or buffer zones where there are reds."
The groups and volunteers monitor for any incursion by the gray squirrel into the buffer zones and preserves that have been created. When a gray is spotted there, the call goes out to trappers and hunters.
They're finding a market for the grays.
Simon Spiller, owner of the Otterton Mill restaurant in Devon, in southwest England, added gray squirrel to his menu — to draw attention to the plight of red squirrels and to reintroduce Britons to squirrel meat.
Among the recipes: Colonial Squirrel Kebab, and Squirrel and Leek Fricasee.
"It's halfway between wild boar and pheasant," Spiller says of the taste. "It's got lower fat and higher mineral content. It's also affordable."
Spiller launched "Squirrel Direct," a service to deliver gray squirrel meat throughout the country. The price: about $7.50 per squirrel wholesale; $12 retail, skinned or unskinned.
Celebrity British chef Heston Blumenthal was one of his customers and plans a squirrel recipe for his TV series next year, Spiller says.
"We don't have anything against the American squirrel," Spiller says. "We're just trying to protect the red squirrel and highlight the benefit of eating game."
There's more at stake in protecting the red than just holding onto an animal that has been here since the Ice Age, Walton says.
"We'd be losing an icon," she says.
Red squirrels hold a special place in Britons' hearts, since children's author Beatrix Potter wrote The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin in 1903.
In the book — Potter's second after The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin is threatened by an old owl that plans to skin him. Nutkin survives, but barely. He loses much of his tail.
Britons such as Walton hope the country's remaining reds are as lucky and survive, too.
Latest Obama environment picks raise eyebrows
Environmental groups have given a guarded response to Barack Obama's newest cabinet picks, just days after hailing his assembly of the "green dream team".
Obama rolled out the latest additions to his team at a press conference in Chicago, choosing the Colorado Senator, Ken Salazar, as his secretary of the interior and the former Iowa governor, Tom Vilsack, for agriculture.
Obama said with Salazar that the interior department would be led by a man with a more "pro-active vision" when it came to protecting wildlife and wilderness. He said that Salazar and Vilsack would "serve not big agribusiness or Washington influence peddlers but family farmers and the American people".
There was a mixed response to both choices - unlike the near universal acclaim from greens this week for Obama's announcement of the Nobel laureate, Steven Chu, as energy secretary, and the Al Gore supporter, Carol Browner, as the new White House climate "tsarina".
Obama's pick as interior secretary had been keenly anticipated by environmentalists - the post oversees public land use and mineral rights. After the Environmental Protection Agency, the interior department is generally viewed as the agency most damaged by the last eight years of environmentally unfriendly policies from George W Bush.
An inspector general's report published this week accused Bush's interior department of running a "secret society" of politically motivated officials who colluded to strip away wildlife protections from species at risk of going extinct. It said the officials tampered with scientific reports on at least a dozen occasions to strip away protections for endangered fish and other wildlife.
While Salazar has supported offshore drilling for oil, he also has a strong record on conservation and opposed Bush's plans to set aside huge tracts of land in the Rocky Mountain West for highly polluting oil shale extraction. But this was not enough to convince the 150 green organisations that supported other contenders for the post, sending a petition to Obama backing Salazar's rivals.
Green organisations see Salazar, a rancher, as too closely tied to old-fashioned western industries like mining. Word of the Colorado Senator's appointment was welcomed by mining organisations.
The Centre for Biological Diversity, a green organisation based in Arizona, said Salazar lacked the strong record on reform needed to clean up the department. It noted Salazar voted against increased fuel efficiency standards for US government vehicles.
"Obama's choices for secretary of energy and his climate change tsar indicate a determined willingness to take on global warming," Kieran Suckling, the centre's director, said. "That team will be weakened by the addition of Ken Salazar, who has fought against federal action on global warming, against higher fuel efficiency standards, and for increased oil drilling and oil subsidies."
Other organisations were more positive about the choice. "He has been a very vocal critic of the Bush administration's reckless approach to rampant land development in the west," said Josh Dorner, a spokesman for the Sierra Club.
There was also a mixed response to the appointment of Vilsack, 58, a former Iowa governor who supported Hillary Clinton for presidential candidate.
As governor of America's major corn producing state, Vilsack has been an advocate of the ethanol industry. That has raised concerns among some environmentalists because his new role will put him in charge of America's policy on biofuels.
"From our perspective biofuels like corn-based ethanol cause tremendous damage around the world," said Glenn Hurowitz, media director of Greenpeace USA.
"We hope that the next agriculture secretary is realistic about the damage that ethanol mandates do to the climate." Biofuels have been charged with barely reducing carbon emissions and forcing up global food prices.
Obama rolled out the latest additions to his team at a press conference in Chicago, choosing the Colorado Senator, Ken Salazar, as his secretary of the interior and the former Iowa governor, Tom Vilsack, for agriculture.
Obama said with Salazar that the interior department would be led by a man with a more "pro-active vision" when it came to protecting wildlife and wilderness. He said that Salazar and Vilsack would "serve not big agribusiness or Washington influence peddlers but family farmers and the American people".
There was a mixed response to both choices - unlike the near universal acclaim from greens this week for Obama's announcement of the Nobel laureate, Steven Chu, as energy secretary, and the Al Gore supporter, Carol Browner, as the new White House climate "tsarina".
Obama's pick as interior secretary had been keenly anticipated by environmentalists - the post oversees public land use and mineral rights. After the Environmental Protection Agency, the interior department is generally viewed as the agency most damaged by the last eight years of environmentally unfriendly policies from George W Bush.
An inspector general's report published this week accused Bush's interior department of running a "secret society" of politically motivated officials who colluded to strip away wildlife protections from species at risk of going extinct. It said the officials tampered with scientific reports on at least a dozen occasions to strip away protections for endangered fish and other wildlife.
While Salazar has supported offshore drilling for oil, he also has a strong record on conservation and opposed Bush's plans to set aside huge tracts of land in the Rocky Mountain West for highly polluting oil shale extraction. But this was not enough to convince the 150 green organisations that supported other contenders for the post, sending a petition to Obama backing Salazar's rivals.
Green organisations see Salazar, a rancher, as too closely tied to old-fashioned western industries like mining. Word of the Colorado Senator's appointment was welcomed by mining organisations.
The Centre for Biological Diversity, a green organisation based in Arizona, said Salazar lacked the strong record on reform needed to clean up the department. It noted Salazar voted against increased fuel efficiency standards for US government vehicles.
"Obama's choices for secretary of energy and his climate change tsar indicate a determined willingness to take on global warming," Kieran Suckling, the centre's director, said. "That team will be weakened by the addition of Ken Salazar, who has fought against federal action on global warming, against higher fuel efficiency standards, and for increased oil drilling and oil subsidies."
Other organisations were more positive about the choice. "He has been a very vocal critic of the Bush administration's reckless approach to rampant land development in the west," said Josh Dorner, a spokesman for the Sierra Club.
There was also a mixed response to the appointment of Vilsack, 58, a former Iowa governor who supported Hillary Clinton for presidential candidate.
As governor of America's major corn producing state, Vilsack has been an advocate of the ethanol industry. That has raised concerns among some environmentalists because his new role will put him in charge of America's policy on biofuels.
"From our perspective biofuels like corn-based ethanol cause tremendous damage around the world," said Glenn Hurowitz, media director of Greenpeace USA.
"We hope that the next agriculture secretary is realistic about the damage that ethanol mandates do to the climate." Biofuels have been charged with barely reducing carbon emissions and forcing up global food prices.
Is face transplant worth risking patient's life?
Doctor must be willing to help patient die if procedure fails, says bioethicist. The face transplant performed a few weeks ago by Dr. Maria Siemionow, a skilled and caring surgeon, and a team of other specialists at the Cleveland Clinic went far beyond several prior experiments, including the world's first such procedure in France three years ago. The Cleveland Clinic doctors replaced nearly the whole face of a woman with one from a female cadaver.
Given the high risk of failure from the rejection of the donor's skin, is such a pioneering procedure worth the danger to the patient’s life?When face transplants were first proposed 10 years ago I thought they were unethical. But, after the success of the French procedure, and after listening to Dr. Siemionow and other surgeons talk about their preparations for the first nearly total face transplant in the U.S., I no longer think that is so.
A transplanted face is biologically like any other transplanted organ: There is always a risk that the recipient’s body will reject it. The immunosuppressive drugs that must be used to try to prevent such a disaster are powerful, but can cause fatal cancers and other serious side-effects, such as kidney failure. Normally, transplant surgeons don’t worry much about these risks because they pale in comparison to the certain death that awaits someone whose heart or liver have stopped working. But a face transplant is intended to improve the quality of life rather than save a life, as a heart, lung, kidney or liver transplant does.
It’s important to note that the surgical skill required to transplant a face and have it function — chew, smile, frown, breathe, blink — has evolved to the point where the odds now favor success. The management of dangerous immunosuppressive drugs has also improved so that handling rejection of the facial tissue seems feasible. There is no doubt that Siemionow has the competency and her team the skills to try the experiment.
After talking to some people with severe facial disfigurement, I realize it makes ethical sense to offer a form of surgery that might kill the patient, because the suffering of the afflicted is so great that they are willing to risk death. We don’t hear much about those with facial deformities due to birth defects, burns, trauma, cancer or violence. That’s because the stigma of severe facial deformity is so enormous, so staggering, that many simply withdraw from society. Others find that, despite the best efforts of reconstructive surgeons, they are unable to eat, breathe or speak comfortably, and are condemned to lives of suffering and pain.
A face transplant, despite its very real dangers, might bring relief. The science has reached the point where trying to help those who are beyond the help of current medical treatments is not just ethical, but almost obligatory.
No second chancesYet, even though a strong case can be made in defense of what has been tried in Cleveland, there are ethical concerns about face transplants.
If the woman who received her new face from a cadaver were to begin to lose it due to tissue rejection that could not be stopped, what will happen? There are no second chances with face transplants — the damage of rejection makes that impossible. What if someone facing this horrendous prospect – life with no face at all — says no to artificial feeding or breathing? What if they beg for morphine to help them die painlessly and more quickly? Any team undertaking face transplants must be ready to manage a failed experiment.
The only humane response to the courage it takes to be the subject of a face transplant is to be ready to help that person in any way necessary, including assistance in dying. The idea of assisted-suicide for tragic transplant failures pushes right up against the law, but insisting on life with no face, as opposed to a horribly disfigured one, is too daunting a prospect to proceed ethically — if death is not an option. Face transplants raise another issue. When you signed a donor card or checked the box on your driver’s license, you probably were not thinking that when you died someone might want to transplant your face. We don’t know what happened in the Cleveland case, but I strongly suspect they used a donor who had a donor card and whose family also approved the removal of the face.
Do we need to insist that no faces be taken from the dead without the advance permission of both the deceased and their family? Shouldn’t the family have some input since they will have to live with the emotional turmoil of potentially seeing a face that somewhat resembles a loved one on another person? And should the laws governing organ donation be revised so donors have the option to give permission, or deny permission, for a facial transplant?
Issues of personal identityThe Cleveland transplant is a ringing alarm clock that it is time to revisit the legislation governing organ and tissue donation. Face transplants raise emotional issues that do not arise when a liver or a pancreas is transplanted. We identify ourselves and each other by our faces. We fall in love with faces. We know much about mood, emotions, and state of mind by simply looking at faces. Some may have no issue giving their liver, corneas, bones, heart or lungs to help others, but the face is simply a different matter.
Click for related content
Woman gets near-total face transplant Fame not face transplant surgeon's motivation A look at face transplants done worldwideBack from dead: 3 people grateful to be alive
Should we allow each person to set their limits on what can be taken from their body after death? Facial transplants are the cutting edge of a wave of new forms of transplantation, including hand and limb transplants, ovarian transplants, uterine transplants and testicular transplants. While it is not clear that these newer types of transplants cross ethical boundaries that ought never be crossed, they surely do raise issues of personal identity and reproductive capacities.
The transplant in Cleveland was done with the laudable goal of trying to help those who are often on the margins of society due to their appearance, or because they cannot eat, speak, drink, smile or breathe without huge effort. Some victims take their own lives in despair. These people should be able to take their chances with a facial transplant if nothing else can help them. That said, medical advances in facial transplants push us into a very new ethical world where life after failure may not be an acceptable option, and where some among us may say they are not willing to give what is required to help.
Arthur Caplan, Ph.D., is director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania
Given the high risk of failure from the rejection of the donor's skin, is such a pioneering procedure worth the danger to the patient’s life?When face transplants were first proposed 10 years ago I thought they were unethical. But, after the success of the French procedure, and after listening to Dr. Siemionow and other surgeons talk about their preparations for the first nearly total face transplant in the U.S., I no longer think that is so.
A transplanted face is biologically like any other transplanted organ: There is always a risk that the recipient’s body will reject it. The immunosuppressive drugs that must be used to try to prevent such a disaster are powerful, but can cause fatal cancers and other serious side-effects, such as kidney failure. Normally, transplant surgeons don’t worry much about these risks because they pale in comparison to the certain death that awaits someone whose heart or liver have stopped working. But a face transplant is intended to improve the quality of life rather than save a life, as a heart, lung, kidney or liver transplant does.
It’s important to note that the surgical skill required to transplant a face and have it function — chew, smile, frown, breathe, blink — has evolved to the point where the odds now favor success. The management of dangerous immunosuppressive drugs has also improved so that handling rejection of the facial tissue seems feasible. There is no doubt that Siemionow has the competency and her team the skills to try the experiment.
After talking to some people with severe facial disfigurement, I realize it makes ethical sense to offer a form of surgery that might kill the patient, because the suffering of the afflicted is so great that they are willing to risk death. We don’t hear much about those with facial deformities due to birth defects, burns, trauma, cancer or violence. That’s because the stigma of severe facial deformity is so enormous, so staggering, that many simply withdraw from society. Others find that, despite the best efforts of reconstructive surgeons, they are unable to eat, breathe or speak comfortably, and are condemned to lives of suffering and pain.
A face transplant, despite its very real dangers, might bring relief. The science has reached the point where trying to help those who are beyond the help of current medical treatments is not just ethical, but almost obligatory.
No second chancesYet, even though a strong case can be made in defense of what has been tried in Cleveland, there are ethical concerns about face transplants.
If the woman who received her new face from a cadaver were to begin to lose it due to tissue rejection that could not be stopped, what will happen? There are no second chances with face transplants — the damage of rejection makes that impossible. What if someone facing this horrendous prospect – life with no face at all — says no to artificial feeding or breathing? What if they beg for morphine to help them die painlessly and more quickly? Any team undertaking face transplants must be ready to manage a failed experiment.
The only humane response to the courage it takes to be the subject of a face transplant is to be ready to help that person in any way necessary, including assistance in dying. The idea of assisted-suicide for tragic transplant failures pushes right up against the law, but insisting on life with no face, as opposed to a horribly disfigured one, is too daunting a prospect to proceed ethically — if death is not an option. Face transplants raise another issue. When you signed a donor card or checked the box on your driver’s license, you probably were not thinking that when you died someone might want to transplant your face. We don’t know what happened in the Cleveland case, but I strongly suspect they used a donor who had a donor card and whose family also approved the removal of the face.
Do we need to insist that no faces be taken from the dead without the advance permission of both the deceased and their family? Shouldn’t the family have some input since they will have to live with the emotional turmoil of potentially seeing a face that somewhat resembles a loved one on another person? And should the laws governing organ donation be revised so donors have the option to give permission, or deny permission, for a facial transplant?
Issues of personal identityThe Cleveland transplant is a ringing alarm clock that it is time to revisit the legislation governing organ and tissue donation. Face transplants raise emotional issues that do not arise when a liver or a pancreas is transplanted. We identify ourselves and each other by our faces. We fall in love with faces. We know much about mood, emotions, and state of mind by simply looking at faces. Some may have no issue giving their liver, corneas, bones, heart or lungs to help others, but the face is simply a different matter.
Click for related content
Woman gets near-total face transplant Fame not face transplant surgeon's motivation A look at face transplants done worldwideBack from dead: 3 people grateful to be alive
Should we allow each person to set their limits on what can be taken from their body after death? Facial transplants are the cutting edge of a wave of new forms of transplantation, including hand and limb transplants, ovarian transplants, uterine transplants and testicular transplants. While it is not clear that these newer types of transplants cross ethical boundaries that ought never be crossed, they surely do raise issues of personal identity and reproductive capacities.
The transplant in Cleveland was done with the laudable goal of trying to help those who are often on the margins of society due to their appearance, or because they cannot eat, speak, drink, smile or breathe without huge effort. Some victims take their own lives in despair. These people should be able to take their chances with a facial transplant if nothing else can help them. That said, medical advances in facial transplants push us into a very new ethical world where life after failure may not be an acceptable option, and where some among us may say they are not willing to give what is required to help.
Arthur Caplan, Ph.D., is director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania
Coldplay's Alleged Plagiarism Was A 'Dagger Through My Heart,' Joe Satriani Says; Chris Martin Denies Wrongdoing
Guitarist Joe Satriani, who sued Coldplay for plagiarism in a Los Angeles court last week over allegations that their song "Viva la Vida" borrowed the melody from his song "If I Could Fly," said in a new interview that he was shocked the first time he heard Coldplay's tune. Meanwhile, in an interview taped before the suit was filed, Coldplay singer Chris Martin insisted the band did nothing wrong.
"I felt like a dagger went right through my heart. It hurt so much," Satriani reportedly told the Music Radar Web site. "The second I heard it, I knew it was [my own] 'If I Could Fly.' " But Satriani said he wasn't the only one who noticed the similarity, claiming that "almost immediately" after Coldplay's album came out last summer, his e-mail was flooded with people asking, " 'Have you heard this song by Coldplay? They ripped you off, man.' I mean, I couldn't tell you how many e-mails I received."
Satriani said, "Everybody noticed the similarities between the songs. It's pretty obvious. It's as simple as that — when you listen to a song and you say, 'Wow, that's a real rip-off.' "
One of the reasons Satriani told the site he was so upset was because he had spent more than a decade working on "If I Could Fly" before he demoed it in 2003 and recorded it as a tribute to his wife, Rubina.
"That's what really hurts about this whole thing," he said. "That I spent so long writing the song, thinking about it, loving it, nursing it, and then finally recording it and standing on stages the world over playing it — and then somebody comes along and plays the exact same song and calls it their own." Satriani called the intense media response to the action "the weirdest thing I've ever been involved in" and said he did everything he could to avoid filing suit, but claims that "Coldplay didn't want to talk about it. They just wanted the whole thing to go away. Maybe they figured this little guitar player guy will leave them alone after a while, I don't know ... But we're talking about a piece of art that I created, and that's something I feel is important. I think everybody should feel that way."
The fact is, Coldplay have talked about it ... kind of. During a recent "Nissan Live Set" on Yahoo.com — filmed before the suit was filed — singer Chris Martin refers to a "Moe Batriani" in defending the band's honor against charges that they borrowed someone else's melody. (The line occurs about 3:30 into the Q&A.)
"When we finished the song 'Viva la Vida,' our only hit single, we knew that was good," Martin joked, referring to an earlier question about the band's confidence in the songs on the Vida album. "And I will maintain that till my dying day, that it's not that bad. Although we are being sued by about 12 people who say that we stole it, though I promise we didn't. Including ... I probably shouldn't say [laughs]. I can't tell you, I can't tell you, but it rhymes with Moe Batriani."
A Coldplay spokesperson has not responded to MTV News' requests for comment on the lawsuit.
"I felt like a dagger went right through my heart. It hurt so much," Satriani reportedly told the Music Radar Web site. "The second I heard it, I knew it was [my own] 'If I Could Fly.' " But Satriani said he wasn't the only one who noticed the similarity, claiming that "almost immediately" after Coldplay's album came out last summer, his e-mail was flooded with people asking, " 'Have you heard this song by Coldplay? They ripped you off, man.' I mean, I couldn't tell you how many e-mails I received."
Satriani said, "Everybody noticed the similarities between the songs. It's pretty obvious. It's as simple as that — when you listen to a song and you say, 'Wow, that's a real rip-off.' "
One of the reasons Satriani told the site he was so upset was because he had spent more than a decade working on "If I Could Fly" before he demoed it in 2003 and recorded it as a tribute to his wife, Rubina.
"That's what really hurts about this whole thing," he said. "That I spent so long writing the song, thinking about it, loving it, nursing it, and then finally recording it and standing on stages the world over playing it — and then somebody comes along and plays the exact same song and calls it their own." Satriani called the intense media response to the action "the weirdest thing I've ever been involved in" and said he did everything he could to avoid filing suit, but claims that "Coldplay didn't want to talk about it. They just wanted the whole thing to go away. Maybe they figured this little guitar player guy will leave them alone after a while, I don't know ... But we're talking about a piece of art that I created, and that's something I feel is important. I think everybody should feel that way."
The fact is, Coldplay have talked about it ... kind of. During a recent "Nissan Live Set" on Yahoo.com — filmed before the suit was filed — singer Chris Martin refers to a "Moe Batriani" in defending the band's honor against charges that they borrowed someone else's melody. (The line occurs about 3:30 into the Q&A.)
"When we finished the song 'Viva la Vida,' our only hit single, we knew that was good," Martin joked, referring to an earlier question about the band's confidence in the songs on the Vida album. "And I will maintain that till my dying day, that it's not that bad. Although we are being sued by about 12 people who say that we stole it, though I promise we didn't. Including ... I probably shouldn't say [laughs]. I can't tell you, I can't tell you, but it rhymes with Moe Batriani."
A Coldplay spokesperson has not responded to MTV News' requests for comment on the lawsuit.
Microsoft taps key ex-Yahoo executive for post
Microsoft Corp tapped on Thursday a former senior Yahoo Inc executive, Qi Lu, to head its online services group.
The software giant, which tried and failed to buy Yahoo earlier this year, is looking to revamp its search-ad strategy to better compete with the industry juggernaut, Google Inc.
Microsoft also has decided it does not want to buy Yahoo any more, although it has left open the possibility of a search deal with the company. Lu, who was responsible for development of the Web search and monetization platforms at Yahoo, left the company in August after 10 years.
He will begin work at Microsoft in January and report directly to Chief Executive Steve Ballmer.
Last month, Microsoft hired Sean Suchter, another former Yahoo search executive.
Microsoft also said Brian McAndrews, the former CEO of aQuantive, which the company acquired last year for $6 billion, is leaving the company. He was senior vice president of the advertiser and publisher solutions group, which will be overseen by Lu in his new role.
Shares of Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft closed at $19.11, down 76 cents or 3.8 percent, while shares of Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo closed down 45 cents or 3.9 percent at $11.05.
The software giant, which tried and failed to buy Yahoo earlier this year, is looking to revamp its search-ad strategy to better compete with the industry juggernaut, Google Inc.
Microsoft also has decided it does not want to buy Yahoo any more, although it has left open the possibility of a search deal with the company. Lu, who was responsible for development of the Web search and monetization platforms at Yahoo, left the company in August after 10 years.
He will begin work at Microsoft in January and report directly to Chief Executive Steve Ballmer.
Last month, Microsoft hired Sean Suchter, another former Yahoo search executive.
Microsoft also said Brian McAndrews, the former CEO of aQuantive, which the company acquired last year for $6 billion, is leaving the company. He was senior vice president of the advertiser and publisher solutions group, which will be overseen by Lu in his new role.
Shares of Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft closed at $19.11, down 76 cents or 3.8 percent, while shares of Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo closed down 45 cents or 3.9 percent at $11.05.
Staying in the spotlight
Between a major redesign, a quiet merger offer from Microsoft, and a rich application platform, Facebook has managed to remain in the social networking spotlight over the last couple of years. We recently had the opportunity to chat with Mike Schroepfer, VP of Facebook Engineering, about everything from open source efforts, to how many engineers it takes to release a chat service, to why Facebook Connect isn't really an identity management system.
But first, we talked about the culture shift of Schroepfer's move from Mozilla in August of this year.
"I feel amazingly fortunate that I've been able to work at a couple of places with top-notch engineers building products that real people use all the time." His new employer has improved his odds for getting into spontaneous conversations about making the world better through technology, though. "At Mozilla I had stickers on my laptop and I could get through a security checkpoint at the airport without being asked questions about Firefox and what was going on."
"But when I joined Facebook," Schroepfer continued, "... I went to the mechanic to pick up my car and had a ten minute discussion about reconnecting with old friends and family... So Facebook has, in my mind, the best opportunity on the planet by a long shot to build the next great web platform... taking that lens of what's important to me, my friends, and my family with Facebook Connect to other sites on the web."
How many engineers does it take to...
Our discussion next turned to how many engineers Schroepfer has at his disposal among Facebook's roughly 700 employees.
"Our engineering staff is in the few hundreds, and when you think about the 120 million international users on the site every day, that's a pretty small number." Some of Facebook's recent product launches haven't required even those numbers, however. "When you look at Facebook Chat or what we've done with Inbox, most of those products were launched with two engineers, maybe three."
"To be honest it's both a blessing and a curse, because we've got way more things that we'd like to do than we're capable of doing right now." Whether the company is large or small, Schroepfer mused, "is a matter of perspective."
Giving back to open source
Next in the conversation was Facebook's open source efforts, which can often be lost in the company's desire to be a central hub of friend activity and data collection. Recently, the company has open sourced projects like Thrift, a framework for scalable cross-language services development, and Scribe, a server for aggregating log data streamed in real time from a large number of servers.
Schroepfer also says that Facebook is also the largest user of Memcache, a distributed memory object caching system. "The reason why I know that is because we've run into a bunch of scalability problems that apparently no one else has, and as a result, have almost completely rewritten Memcache to scale to eight cores, to be able to sustain tens of millions of Memcache operations a second to run our site. So it's not just creating new things, but taking existing things and contributing this back to open source so other people can use it as well."
Of course, opening up isn't always on Facebook's to-do list. Some products, like Facebook Chat which was launched in April this year, are not yet officially accessible by third-party clients. While some apps like Adium have reverse engineered access to Facebook Chat, Schroepfer said "I don't know if we have any specific plans to open [it] up, but we have some cool stuff we're working on that I'd like to talk about shortly... some other additions to the capabilities of chat."
But first, we talked about the culture shift of Schroepfer's move from Mozilla in August of this year.
"I feel amazingly fortunate that I've been able to work at a couple of places with top-notch engineers building products that real people use all the time." His new employer has improved his odds for getting into spontaneous conversations about making the world better through technology, though. "At Mozilla I had stickers on my laptop and I could get through a security checkpoint at the airport without being asked questions about Firefox and what was going on."
"But when I joined Facebook," Schroepfer continued, "... I went to the mechanic to pick up my car and had a ten minute discussion about reconnecting with old friends and family... So Facebook has, in my mind, the best opportunity on the planet by a long shot to build the next great web platform... taking that lens of what's important to me, my friends, and my family with Facebook Connect to other sites on the web."
How many engineers does it take to...
Our discussion next turned to how many engineers Schroepfer has at his disposal among Facebook's roughly 700 employees.
"Our engineering staff is in the few hundreds, and when you think about the 120 million international users on the site every day, that's a pretty small number." Some of Facebook's recent product launches haven't required even those numbers, however. "When you look at Facebook Chat or what we've done with Inbox, most of those products were launched with two engineers, maybe three."
"To be honest it's both a blessing and a curse, because we've got way more things that we'd like to do than we're capable of doing right now." Whether the company is large or small, Schroepfer mused, "is a matter of perspective."
Giving back to open source
Next in the conversation was Facebook's open source efforts, which can often be lost in the company's desire to be a central hub of friend activity and data collection. Recently, the company has open sourced projects like Thrift, a framework for scalable cross-language services development, and Scribe, a server for aggregating log data streamed in real time from a large number of servers.
Schroepfer also says that Facebook is also the largest user of Memcache, a distributed memory object caching system. "The reason why I know that is because we've run into a bunch of scalability problems that apparently no one else has, and as a result, have almost completely rewritten Memcache to scale to eight cores, to be able to sustain tens of millions of Memcache operations a second to run our site. So it's not just creating new things, but taking existing things and contributing this back to open source so other people can use it as well."
Of course, opening up isn't always on Facebook's to-do list. Some products, like Facebook Chat which was launched in April this year, are not yet officially accessible by third-party clients. While some apps like Adium have reverse engineered access to Facebook Chat, Schroepfer said "I don't know if we have any specific plans to open [it] up, but we have some cool stuff we're working on that I'd like to talk about shortly... some other additions to the capabilities of chat."
Malware writers spoof Firefox plug-ins
Phony add-on attack attempts to steal bank info..
A new attack for the Mozilla Firefox browser is setting off alarms in the security world.
According to researchers from BitDefender, a new attack is being spread under the guise of a browser plug-in. The malware reportedly disguises itself as Greasemonkey, a plug-in which allows users to write and execute custom scripts to add or augment web page data.
Once installed, the malicious code runs every time the browser is loaded. The malware will attempt to seek out stored details for popular banks and online payment services, such as PayPal and eGold.
Any captured information is then uploaded to a server in Russia.
"Users should be aware of the risks they are facing if such confidential information is stolen," remarked Viorel Canja, who heads up BitDefender's anti-virus lab.
Though a trojan masquerading as a Firefox plug-in is unusual, disguising malware as browser and system add-ons is a common social engineering practice.
Many trojans attempt to lure victims by pretending to be ActiveX files for Internet Explorer. Attackers also commonly use the promise of pornographic or sensational videos to dupe users into downloading malware-laden fake codec files.
A new attack for the Mozilla Firefox browser is setting off alarms in the security world.
According to researchers from BitDefender, a new attack is being spread under the guise of a browser plug-in. The malware reportedly disguises itself as Greasemonkey, a plug-in which allows users to write and execute custom scripts to add or augment web page data.
Once installed, the malicious code runs every time the browser is loaded. The malware will attempt to seek out stored details for popular banks and online payment services, such as PayPal and eGold.
Any captured information is then uploaded to a server in Russia.
"Users should be aware of the risks they are facing if such confidential information is stolen," remarked Viorel Canja, who heads up BitDefender's anti-virus lab.
Though a trojan masquerading as a Firefox plug-in is unusual, disguising malware as browser and system add-ons is a common social engineering practice.
Many trojans attempt to lure victims by pretending to be ActiveX files for Internet Explorer. Attackers also commonly use the promise of pornographic or sensational videos to dupe users into downloading malware-laden fake codec files.
Facebook delays plan to let employees sell stock
Facebook employees hoping to cash out some stock options received an unpleasant early Christmas present this week, courtesy of the economic downturn.
In August, Facebook began considering ways to let current employees unload a portion of their shares that had vested by this fall.
But on Thursday, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg notified employees that the plan was on hold. "I'm writing this note to let you know some bad news," he wrote, according to an excerpt posted on Valleywag.com. "Despite a lot of work, we have not been able to finalize a plan for the employee stock sale we announced in August."
That indefinite postponement comes during a punishing downturn for publicly-traded technology companies and increasing layoffs in Silicon Valley. Google has fallen in value from its 2007 high by roughly 62 percent, closing at $274.32 on Thursday. Apple has dropped by around 55 percent, closing at $91.41, and eBay's fall is about 67 percent.
And, unlike Facebook, those tech companies are actually profitable.
It's not uncommon for pre-IPO employees to gripe about not being able to cash out, but it is unusual for employers to arrange a partial payday in the way that Zuckerberg envisioned.
It must have seemed like a good idea this summer, especially when memories of a $15 billion valuation still seemed plausible. And the horrible market for IPOs--there were just six in the first three quarters of 2008, the lowest volume since 1977, according to Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association--must have discouraged that exit path.
But now that the company's valuation has collapsed at least as quickly as the NASDAQ, Facebook has been left with little choice but to close the shutters, hope for the best, and attempt to ride out the storm.
In August, Facebook began considering ways to let current employees unload a portion of their shares that had vested by this fall.
But on Thursday, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg notified employees that the plan was on hold. "I'm writing this note to let you know some bad news," he wrote, according to an excerpt posted on Valleywag.com. "Despite a lot of work, we have not been able to finalize a plan for the employee stock sale we announced in August."
That indefinite postponement comes during a punishing downturn for publicly-traded technology companies and increasing layoffs in Silicon Valley. Google has fallen in value from its 2007 high by roughly 62 percent, closing at $274.32 on Thursday. Apple has dropped by around 55 percent, closing at $91.41, and eBay's fall is about 67 percent.
And, unlike Facebook, those tech companies are actually profitable.
It's not uncommon for pre-IPO employees to gripe about not being able to cash out, but it is unusual for employers to arrange a partial payday in the way that Zuckerberg envisioned.
It must have seemed like a good idea this summer, especially when memories of a $15 billion valuation still seemed plausible. And the horrible market for IPOs--there were just six in the first three quarters of 2008, the lowest volume since 1977, according to Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association--must have discouraged that exit path.
But now that the company's valuation has collapsed at least as quickly as the NASDAQ, Facebook has been left with little choice but to close the shutters, hope for the best, and attempt to ride out the storm.
Global AIDS crisis overblown? Some dare to say so
As World AIDS Day is marked Today, some experts are growing more outspoken in complaining that AIDS is eating up funding at the expense of more pressing health needs.
They argue that the world has entered a post-AIDS era in which the disease's spread has largely been curbed in much of the world, Africa excepted.
"AIDS is a terrible humanitarian tragedy, but it's just one of many terrible humanitarian tragedies," said Jeremy Shiffman, who studies health spending at Syracuse University.
Roger England of Health Systems Workshop, a think tank based in the Caribbean island of Grenada, goes further. He argues that UNAIDS, the U.N. agency leading the fight against the disease, has outlived its purpose and should be disbanded.
"The global HIV industry is too big and out of control. We have created a monster with too many vested interests and reputations at stake, ... too many relatively well paid HIV staff in affected countries, and too many rock stars with AIDS support as a fashion accessory," he wrote in the British Medical Journal in May.
Paul de Lay, a director at UNAIDS, disagrees. It's valid to question AIDS' place in the world's priorities, he says, but insists the turnaround is very recent and it would be wrong to think the epidemic is under control.
"We have an epidemic that has caused between 55 million and 60 million infections," de Lay said. "To suddenly pull the rug out from underneath that would be disastrous."
U.N. officials roughly estimate that about 33 million people worldwide have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Scientists say infections peaked in the late 1990s and are unlikely to spark big epidemics beyond Africa.
In developed countries, AIDS drugs have turned the once-fatal disease into a manageable illness.
England argues that closing UNAIDS would free up its $200 million annual budget for other health problems such as pneumonia, which kills more children every year than AIDS, malaria and measles combined.
"By putting more money into AIDS, we are implicitly saying it's OK for more kids to die of pneumonia," England said.
His comments touch on the bigger complaint: that AIDS hogs money and may damage other health programs.
By 2006, AIDS funding accounted for 80 percent of all American aid for health and population issues, according to the Global Health Council.
In Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda and elsewhere, donations for HIV projects routinely outstrip the entire national health budgets.
In a 2006 report, Rwandan officials noted a "gross misallocation of resources" in health: $47 million went to HIV, $18 million went to malaria, the country's biggest killer, and $1 million went to childhood illnesses.
"There needs to be a rational system for how to apportion scarce funds," said Helen Epstein, an AIDS expert who has consulted for UNICEF, the World Bank, and others.
AIDS advocates say their projects do more than curb the virus; their efforts strengthen other health programs by providing basic health services.
But across Africa, about 1.5 million doctors and nurses are still needed, and hospitals regularly run out of basic medicines.
Experts working on other health problems struggle to attract money and attention when competing with AIDS.
"Diarrhea kills five times as many kids as AIDS," said John Oldfield, executive vice president of Water Advocates, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that promotes clean water and sanitation.
"Everybody talks about AIDS at cocktail parties," Oldfield said. "But nobody wants to hear about diarrhea," he said.
These competing claims on public money are likely to grow louder as the world financial meltdown threatens to deplete health dollars.
"We cannot afford, in this time of crisis, to squander our investments," Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO's director-general, said in a recent statement.
Some experts ask whether it makes sense to have UNAIDS, WHO, UNICEF, the World Bank, the Global Fund plus countless other AIDS organizations, all serving the same cause.
"I do not want to see the cause of AIDS harmed," said Shiffman of Syracuse University. But "For AIDS to crowd out other issues is ethically unjust."
De Lay argues that the solution is not to reshuffle resources but to boost them.
"To take money away from AIDS and give it to diarrheal diseases or onchocerciasis (river blindness) or leishmaniasis (disfiguring parasites) doesn't make any sense," he said. "We'd just be doing a worse job in everything else."
They argue that the world has entered a post-AIDS era in which the disease's spread has largely been curbed in much of the world, Africa excepted.
"AIDS is a terrible humanitarian tragedy, but it's just one of many terrible humanitarian tragedies," said Jeremy Shiffman, who studies health spending at Syracuse University.
Roger England of Health Systems Workshop, a think tank based in the Caribbean island of Grenada, goes further. He argues that UNAIDS, the U.N. agency leading the fight against the disease, has outlived its purpose and should be disbanded.
"The global HIV industry is too big and out of control. We have created a monster with too many vested interests and reputations at stake, ... too many relatively well paid HIV staff in affected countries, and too many rock stars with AIDS support as a fashion accessory," he wrote in the British Medical Journal in May.
Paul de Lay, a director at UNAIDS, disagrees. It's valid to question AIDS' place in the world's priorities, he says, but insists the turnaround is very recent and it would be wrong to think the epidemic is under control.
"We have an epidemic that has caused between 55 million and 60 million infections," de Lay said. "To suddenly pull the rug out from underneath that would be disastrous."
U.N. officials roughly estimate that about 33 million people worldwide have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Scientists say infections peaked in the late 1990s and are unlikely to spark big epidemics beyond Africa.
In developed countries, AIDS drugs have turned the once-fatal disease into a manageable illness.
England argues that closing UNAIDS would free up its $200 million annual budget for other health problems such as pneumonia, which kills more children every year than AIDS, malaria and measles combined.
"By putting more money into AIDS, we are implicitly saying it's OK for more kids to die of pneumonia," England said.
His comments touch on the bigger complaint: that AIDS hogs money and may damage other health programs.
By 2006, AIDS funding accounted for 80 percent of all American aid for health and population issues, according to the Global Health Council.
In Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda and elsewhere, donations for HIV projects routinely outstrip the entire national health budgets.
In a 2006 report, Rwandan officials noted a "gross misallocation of resources" in health: $47 million went to HIV, $18 million went to malaria, the country's biggest killer, and $1 million went to childhood illnesses.
"There needs to be a rational system for how to apportion scarce funds," said Helen Epstein, an AIDS expert who has consulted for UNICEF, the World Bank, and others.
AIDS advocates say their projects do more than curb the virus; their efforts strengthen other health programs by providing basic health services.
But across Africa, about 1.5 million doctors and nurses are still needed, and hospitals regularly run out of basic medicines.
Experts working on other health problems struggle to attract money and attention when competing with AIDS.
"Diarrhea kills five times as many kids as AIDS," said John Oldfield, executive vice president of Water Advocates, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that promotes clean water and sanitation.
"Everybody talks about AIDS at cocktail parties," Oldfield said. "But nobody wants to hear about diarrhea," he said.
These competing claims on public money are likely to grow louder as the world financial meltdown threatens to deplete health dollars.
"We cannot afford, in this time of crisis, to squander our investments," Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO's director-general, said in a recent statement.
Some experts ask whether it makes sense to have UNAIDS, WHO, UNICEF, the World Bank, the Global Fund plus countless other AIDS organizations, all serving the same cause.
"I do not want to see the cause of AIDS harmed," said Shiffman of Syracuse University. But "For AIDS to crowd out other issues is ethically unjust."
De Lay argues that the solution is not to reshuffle resources but to boost them.
"To take money away from AIDS and give it to diarrheal diseases or onchocerciasis (river blindness) or leishmaniasis (disfiguring parasites) doesn't make any sense," he said. "We'd just be doing a worse job in everything else."
Internet Worm Attacks Windows...Again
Because Windows has more holes than a slab of Swiss cheese, another worm has found its way down into the warm, gooey center.
ZoomAccording to a Microsoft blog, the number of attacks from Win32/Conficker.A has increased over the last few days. The funny thing is, Microsoft already addressed the security hole with update MS08-067 released back in October. But despite the recent patch, the malware is currently focusing on corporations, and has even appeared on several hundred home PCs.
"It opens a random port between port 1024 and 10000 and acts like a web server," says Microsoft’s Ziv Mador. "It propagates to random computers on the network by exploiting MS08-067. Once the remote computer is exploited, that computer will download a copy of the worm via HTTP using the random port opened by the worm. The worm often uses a .JPG extension when copied over and then it is saved to the local system folder as a random named dll."
In the blog, Mador explains that the worm patches the vulnerable API in memory so that the current host machine will no longer be vulnerable. While this may sound unusual for malware, this in fact ensures that no other malware will infect the system while the worm resides in the bowels of Windows. Mador also noted that there are several IRC bots exploiting the security hole patched by MS08-067.
"We detect them as Backdoor:Win32/IRCbot.BH," he said.
Win32/Conficker.A creates a copy of itself in the %System% directory, using a random file name, when executed. If the worm infects a Windows 2000 machine, it injects code into the "services.exe" process; if the platform is another Windows operating system, the worm creates a new service called netsvcs. The worm then goes online and connects to trafficconverter.biz and attempts to download and execute loadadv.exe. CA rates its treat assessment as medium in destructiveness and pervasiveness, but low in overall risk; Symantec also rates the worm as medium and low.
Reports surrounding the infestation mainly originate in the States, however other countries include Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Taiwan and eight others are coming in as well. Surprisingly, the worm has avoided Ukrainian altogether, as Microsoft states that no cases of infections have been reported in that country.
Microsoft said that it will continue to monitor the situation, however consumers should install MS08-067 if they have not already done so.
ZoomAccording to a Microsoft blog, the number of attacks from Win32/Conficker.A has increased over the last few days. The funny thing is, Microsoft already addressed the security hole with update MS08-067 released back in October. But despite the recent patch, the malware is currently focusing on corporations, and has even appeared on several hundred home PCs.
"It opens a random port between port 1024 and 10000 and acts like a web server," says Microsoft’s Ziv Mador. "It propagates to random computers on the network by exploiting MS08-067. Once the remote computer is exploited, that computer will download a copy of the worm via HTTP using the random port opened by the worm. The worm often uses a .JPG extension when copied over and then it is saved to the local system folder as a random named dll."
In the blog, Mador explains that the worm patches the vulnerable API in memory so that the current host machine will no longer be vulnerable. While this may sound unusual for malware, this in fact ensures that no other malware will infect the system while the worm resides in the bowels of Windows. Mador also noted that there are several IRC bots exploiting the security hole patched by MS08-067.
"We detect them as Backdoor:Win32/IRCbot.BH," he said.
Win32/Conficker.A creates a copy of itself in the %System% directory, using a random file name, when executed. If the worm infects a Windows 2000 machine, it injects code into the "services.exe" process; if the platform is another Windows operating system, the worm creates a new service called netsvcs. The worm then goes online and connects to trafficconverter.biz and attempts to download and execute loadadv.exe. CA rates its treat assessment as medium in destructiveness and pervasiveness, but low in overall risk; Symantec also rates the worm as medium and low.
Reports surrounding the infestation mainly originate in the States, however other countries include Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Taiwan and eight others are coming in as well. Surprisingly, the worm has avoided Ukrainian altogether, as Microsoft states that no cases of infections have been reported in that country.
Microsoft said that it will continue to monitor the situation, however consumers should install MS08-067 if they have not already done so.
Facebook Connect appears set for expansion
The New York Times, in a big-picture story Sunday about the social network's plans to extend its reach across the Web, notes that the Facebook Connect service is gearing up for expansion:
In the next few weeks, a number of prominent Web sites will weave this service into their pages, including those of the Discovery Channel and The San Francisco Chronicle, the social news site Digg, the genealogy network Geni, and the online video hub Hulu.
And TechCrunch's Michael Arrington chimed in with a related post about Facebook Connect and other such services, noting that Facebook had slated Sunday as the start of "a big press push" for Facebook Connect.
Facebook Connect was launched in May as a way for members to connect their profile data and authentication credentials to external Web sites, much like services offered by rivals MySpace and Google. Members can use their Facebook identities across the Web, including profile photos, names, photos, friends, groups, events, and other information. Facebook handles the authentication process and the company has stressed that user security will be a priority.
Some of the other announced Facebook Connect partners include: Movable Type, Amiando, CBS.com, CNET (that's us, of course) CitySearch, CNET, CollegeHumor, Disney-ABC Television Group, Evite, Flock, Kongregate, Loopt, Plaxo, Radar, Red Bull, Seesmic, Socialthing!, StumbleUpon, The Insider, Twitter, Uber, Vimeo, and Xobni.
In the next few weeks, a number of prominent Web sites will weave this service into their pages, including those of the Discovery Channel and The San Francisco Chronicle, the social news site Digg, the genealogy network Geni, and the online video hub Hulu.
And TechCrunch's Michael Arrington chimed in with a related post about Facebook Connect and other such services, noting that Facebook had slated Sunday as the start of "a big press push" for Facebook Connect.
Facebook Connect was launched in May as a way for members to connect their profile data and authentication credentials to external Web sites, much like services offered by rivals MySpace and Google. Members can use their Facebook identities across the Web, including profile photos, names, photos, friends, groups, events, and other information. Facebook handles the authentication process and the company has stressed that user security will be a priority.
Some of the other announced Facebook Connect partners include: Movable Type, Amiando, CBS.com, CNET (that's us, of course) CitySearch, CNET, CollegeHumor, Disney-ABC Television Group, Evite, Flock, Kongregate, Loopt, Plaxo, Radar, Red Bull, Seesmic, Socialthing!, StumbleUpon, The Insider, Twitter, Uber, Vimeo, and Xobni.
Microsoft and Yahoo working on $20 billion deal
Microsoft is once again in talks with Yahoo to acquire its search business for $20 billion according to reports from The Times.The deal comes after two previously failed Microsoft attempts to take over all of Yahoo. Also, Microsoft would support a Yahoo management team with $5 billion. This would be used to fill in several empty positions on Yahoo's team, such as the CEO position Jerry Yang left recently.The deal would bolster Microsoft's search presence, which has been lacking. Microsoft has also been rumored to be rebranding "Live Search" into "Kumo". After news of this meeting, it is rumored that Kumo will be a mixture of Yahoo and Live Search into one. The deal comes as a saviour to Yahoo also - it is estimated that Yahoo will benefit $2 billion per year under the new deal.
Antivirus programs unreliable during critical coverage gap
The reactive nature of IT security is a well-known weakness that puts defenders at an inherent disadvantage against attackers. Unfortunately, it's also a flaw that's extremely difficult to correct; teaching virus scanners to correctly identify new threats without also generating false positives is no simple task. In theory, anti-malware products have gotten considerably better at this sort of work, but if recent research done by the chief scientist of FireEye, Stuart Staniford is correct, our antivirus dragnet has considerably more holes in it than previously suspected.
In the interests of full disclosure, FireEye is a security solutions provider, and Stuart Staniford is their chief scientist. This casts his conclusions in a somewhat different light, but Staniford makes no effort to hide his affiliations as he details the experiment he performed in his blog entry. Staniford walks through his assumptions, data sets, and procedures in some depth; I recommend consulting his full entry if you're curious about the experiment.
In the interests of full disclosure, FireEye is a security solutions provider, and Stuart Staniford is their chief scientist. This casts his conclusions in a somewhat different light, but Staniford makes no effort to hide his affiliations as he details the experiment he performed in his blog entry. Staniford walks through his assumptions, data sets, and procedures in some depth; I recommend consulting his full entry if you're curious about the experiment.
The good news here is that FireEye's own custom security software tends to detect new malware more-or-less at the same time as VirusTotal. Unfortunately, the lag time between VirusTotal learning to recognize a new MD5 hash and a majority of AV scanners being able to recognize that same bit of malware is substantial.
Based on Staniford's results, only 40 percent of AV products can detect a given malware binary within three days of that binary hitting the 'Net. This detection rate improves significantly as time passes, but never reaches 100 percent, even months after the initial executable was uploaded to VirusTotal.com. The implications of this lag time are significant, as it identifies a span of days when the malware (whatever it happens to be) is free to move about online more-or-less undetected. Even if we assume Staniford's measurements are off by 15-20 percent, it's still clear that the majority of AV products leave significant coverage gaps.
The antimalware companies themselves are aware of this; McAfee intends to offer a cloud-based solution it believes will reduce an AV engine's update time. Examine Staniford's data compared to the McAfee article I linked above, however, and you'll note a distinct difference in how long it takes AV companies to roll out solutions (as measured using VirusTotal) versus how long McAfee claims it takes (1-3 days). This isn't proof that McAfee is wrong; FireEye's chief scientist doesn't break out results by scanner, but it's statistically doubtful that McAfee is always one of the 40 percent Staniford measured.
Based on Staniford's results, only 40 percent of AV products can detect a given malware binary within three days of that binary hitting the 'Net. This detection rate improves significantly as time passes, but never reaches 100 percent, even months after the initial executable was uploaded to VirusTotal.com. The implications of this lag time are significant, as it identifies a span of days when the malware (whatever it happens to be) is free to move about online more-or-less undetected. Even if we assume Staniford's measurements are off by 15-20 percent, it's still clear that the majority of AV products leave significant coverage gaps.
The antimalware companies themselves are aware of this; McAfee intends to offer a cloud-based solution it believes will reduce an AV engine's update time. Examine Staniford's data compared to the McAfee article I linked above, however, and you'll note a distinct difference in how long it takes AV companies to roll out solutions (as measured using VirusTotal) versus how long McAfee claims it takes (1-3 days). This isn't proof that McAfee is wrong; FireEye's chief scientist doesn't break out results by scanner, but it's statistically doubtful that McAfee is always one of the 40 percent Staniford measured.
Mumbai terrorist attacks kill at least 100
Serial terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India's financial capital, have left at least 100 dead and 280 wounded.
Teams of gunmen attacked two five-star hotels, a railway station, hospitals, and a restaurant famous for attracting tourists, the AP reports.
The gunmen specifically targeted Americans and Britons at the hotels and the restaurant, Leopold's. An unknown number of people were being held hostage as police raided the two hotels, the Taj and the Oberio. At least six of the gunmen have been killed since the attacks began at about 9:30 local time on Wednesday.
A Muslim terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
The government ordered schools and colleges closed on Thursday. But according to techgoss.com editor Dhananjay Varma, now in Delhi, the country's tech hubs are operating normally, and internal flights between Delhi and Mumbai were running as of 8am local time Thursday. International flights may not fly from Mumbai today, Varma said.
The England Cricket team is touring India for a series of one-day internationals. The fifth was held yesterday in Cuttack, on the country's east coast. According to Independent, the tour may be cut short. ®
Teams of gunmen attacked two five-star hotels, a railway station, hospitals, and a restaurant famous for attracting tourists, the AP reports.
The gunmen specifically targeted Americans and Britons at the hotels and the restaurant, Leopold's. An unknown number of people were being held hostage as police raided the two hotels, the Taj and the Oberio. At least six of the gunmen have been killed since the attacks began at about 9:30 local time on Wednesday.
A Muslim terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
The government ordered schools and colleges closed on Thursday. But according to techgoss.com editor Dhananjay Varma, now in Delhi, the country's tech hubs are operating normally, and internal flights between Delhi and Mumbai were running as of 8am local time Thursday. International flights may not fly from Mumbai today, Varma said.
The England Cricket team is touring India for a series of one-day internationals. The fifth was held yesterday in Cuttack, on the country's east coast. According to Independent, the tour may be cut short. ®
Facebook Spammer Dinged for $873 Million
A federal court has awarded Facebook more than $873 million in damages against a spammer for showering the site's members with unsolicited advertisements that pushed sexually oriented products.
Judge Jeremy Fogel, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, awarded statutory damages of more than $436.6 million against Adam Guerbuez and his company, Atlantis Blue Capital, and an equal sum in aggravated statutory damages.
The judgment also provides for Facebook to collect reasonable attorneys' fees and recover the costs of the lawsuit, and must file an application for this by Dec. 12.
Sam O'Rourke, Facebook's senior corporate counsel, told InternetNews.com that the social networking site does not expect to be able to collect anywhere near the amount awarded, but said the legal victory still sends a signal to all spammers that it will pursue them relentlessly.
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"There's no doubt that this guy isn't worth $873 million or any fraction of that amount," he said. "But we intend to go after him and collect whatever we can, even if it's a hundred dollars. We're committed to protecting our users against this stuff, and we'll target anybody that targets Facebook."
According to Facebook, this is the largest judgment yet for an action brought under the nearly five-year-old Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act, better known as the CAN-SPAM Act, which covers commercial e-mails and.
Facebook filed suit on Aug. 14 against Blue Atlantic and Guerbuez, a Canadian citizen, after following the trail of investigations prompted by an unusually high amount of spam in March and April, O'Rourke said. He added that Guerbuez is well-known in spamming circles, and once its attorneys heard of his involvement, they jumped on the case.
Guerbuez may have developed a reputation in other shady dealings besides spam, Facebook said. According to the site and coverage in the local Montreal Mirror, Guerbuez in recent years built a business on making and selling videos of people assaulting local vagrants and getting them to commit humiliating acts, and has also been a participant in racist skinhead groups.
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A private investigator employed by Facebook tracked Guerbuez down in Montreal, and served him with court papers, videotaping the process for evidence, O'Rourke said. Guerbuez failed to turn up in court on Sept. 3 to answer the summons, according to O'Rourke.
The long arm of social networking
Facebook's lawyers then filed an application for a default judgment on Nov. 7, O'Rourke said, and petitioned for an expedited hearing. "We had been given a hearing date in December, and decided to expedite that because we didn't want the defendant to hide his assets," O'Rourke said.
The expedited hearing was granted for Nov. 21, during which the court made its ruling. Details of the court filings are available online.
O'Rourke said there are other spam cases Facebook plans to pursue, but declined to disclose details.
Special ReportThe Privacy of Social NetworkingWith advertisers, developers and social sites all vying for a piece of the pie, social networking has become a big-bucks business. But at what cost? Additionally, the Guerbuez case is one of several high-profile lawsuits in which Facebook has been involved during the past two years. In June, it settled a lawsuit by ConnectU, which accused Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg of stealing the idea for Facebook from Harvard University classmates. ConnectU since filed an appeal contesting the settlement, which a judge ultimately threw out.
Facebook's controversial Beacon service, which automatically placed ads in members profiles based on their activities, also became a lightning rod for criticism. The company ultimately apologized in response to the outcry around Beacon, but the product still resulted in a pair of class-action lawsuits.
One had been filed in April against Blockbuster, a Beacon advertiser, making allegations of privacy violations related to how the service tracked members and placed ads on profiles. The second, a class-action federal lawsuit, was filed against Facebook over Beacon in a California court on Aug. 14.
The uproar over Beacon eventually led Facebook to change its approach to the service, requiring user opt-in.
Judge Jeremy Fogel, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, awarded statutory damages of more than $436.6 million against Adam Guerbuez and his company, Atlantis Blue Capital, and an equal sum in aggravated statutory damages.
The judgment also provides for Facebook to collect reasonable attorneys' fees and recover the costs of the lawsuit, and must file an application for this by Dec. 12.
Sam O'Rourke, Facebook's senior corporate counsel, told InternetNews.com that the social networking site does not expect to be able to collect anywhere near the amount awarded, but said the legal victory still sends a signal to all spammers that it will pursue them relentlessly.
RELATED ARTICLES
Facebook Backpedals on BeaconFacebook Apologizes For Beacon BlundersConnectU Takes Facebook Founders To Court
For more stories on this topic:
"There's no doubt that this guy isn't worth $873 million or any fraction of that amount," he said. "But we intend to go after him and collect whatever we can, even if it's a hundred dollars. We're committed to protecting our users against this stuff, and we'll target anybody that targets Facebook."
According to Facebook, this is the largest judgment yet for an action brought under the nearly five-year-old Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act, better known as the CAN-SPAM Act, which covers commercial e-mails and.
Facebook filed suit on Aug. 14 against Blue Atlantic and Guerbuez, a Canadian citizen, after following the trail of investigations prompted by an unusually high amount of spam in March and April, O'Rourke said. He added that Guerbuez is well-known in spamming circles, and once its attorneys heard of his involvement, they jumped on the case.
Guerbuez may have developed a reputation in other shady dealings besides spam, Facebook said. According to the site and coverage in the local Montreal Mirror, Guerbuez in recent years built a business on making and selling videos of people assaulting local vagrants and getting them to commit humiliating acts, and has also been a participant in racist skinhead groups.
LATEST NEWSFlat Lines Seen for eCommerce Holiday SpendReport: Economy Won't Dim Apple's iPhoneID Thieves Hit Federal Credit Unions, ConsumersMainframe Breach at LensCrafters Parent Hits 59KHP, Cisco Weigh on Tech Stocks
A private investigator employed by Facebook tracked Guerbuez down in Montreal, and served him with court papers, videotaping the process for evidence, O'Rourke said. Guerbuez failed to turn up in court on Sept. 3 to answer the summons, according to O'Rourke.
The long arm of social networking
Facebook's lawyers then filed an application for a default judgment on Nov. 7, O'Rourke said, and petitioned for an expedited hearing. "We had been given a hearing date in December, and decided to expedite that because we didn't want the defendant to hide his assets," O'Rourke said.
The expedited hearing was granted for Nov. 21, during which the court made its ruling. Details of the court filings are available online.
O'Rourke said there are other spam cases Facebook plans to pursue, but declined to disclose details.
Special ReportThe Privacy of Social NetworkingWith advertisers, developers and social sites all vying for a piece of the pie, social networking has become a big-bucks business. But at what cost? Additionally, the Guerbuez case is one of several high-profile lawsuits in which Facebook has been involved during the past two years. In June, it settled a lawsuit by ConnectU, which accused Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg of stealing the idea for Facebook from Harvard University classmates. ConnectU since filed an appeal contesting the settlement, which a judge ultimately threw out.
Facebook's controversial Beacon service, which automatically placed ads in members profiles based on their activities, also became a lightning rod for criticism. The company ultimately apologized in response to the outcry around Beacon, but the product still resulted in a pair of class-action lawsuits.
One had been filed in April against Blockbuster, a Beacon advertiser, making allegations of privacy violations related to how the service tracked members and placed ads on profiles. The second, a class-action federal lawsuit, was filed against Facebook over Beacon in a California court on Aug. 14.
The uproar over Beacon eventually led Facebook to change its approach to the service, requiring user opt-in.
Nude Photos on iPhone a Wakeup Call
Be careful what you store on your mobile device. It's a long held maxim that came more clearly into focus this past week following reports of a lost Apple iPhone containing nude photos.
According to a story in the Associated Press, Phillip Sherman accidentally left his iPhone behind at a local McDonald's franchise in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
After he returned to retrieve it, he said he discovered nude photos of his wife that he'd stored on his iPhone had been illegally distributed on the Internet without his consent.
Now he and his wife, Tina, are suing the McDonald's Corp., the franchise owner and the store manager for $3 million in damages, according to the AP, for "suffering, embarrassment and the cost of having to move to a new home." The suit says that Sherman left the phone at the McDonald's in July and that employees promised to secure it until he returned.
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Whatever the outcome of the case, security experts say it's another example of how unauthorized access and distribution of inappropriate or confidential content can ignite corporate brand disasters and data security headaches.
"Photos like nude shots of someone's spouse are not the only sensitive data on a smartphone," Tom Cross, IBM X-force researcher, told InternetNews.com. The X-Force is a research group within IBM’s Internet Security Systems division.
"Users are carrying these devices everywhere as they use it for both work and life," explained Cross.
Security measures and a backup plan
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Whether the Arkansas incident bears out -- there have been some online reports it's a hoax -- companies can learn several lessons, Cross said.
The first is educating users about keeping sensitive and personal data off the device, said Cross. While users will nod and agree about why it's important, Cross said IT has to acknowledge that it will happen and should put security measures in place as a backup plan.
Cross recommends strong password protection policies, including one that shuts down a device once it goes inactive for five or ten seconds. Such automatic locking will stop unauthorized access to confidential information, he explained.
"You have to put policies in place and manage those policies. It's not just a matter of losing a $400 device. It's the case of losing invaluable data," he said.
The next step is instructing employees to notify IT immediately once a device goes missing. That way the smartphone can either be remotely locked or wiped clean. This could go a long way toward preventing such 'iPhone nude woman' scenarios, said Cross.
As the security expert noted, IT teams don't have the time to check smartphones for inappropriate content such as nude photos. But they should make the time to put good security policies and management strategies in place, he said.
According to a story in the Associated Press, Phillip Sherman accidentally left his iPhone behind at a local McDonald's franchise in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
After he returned to retrieve it, he said he discovered nude photos of his wife that he'd stored on his iPhone had been illegally distributed on the Internet without his consent.
Now he and his wife, Tina, are suing the McDonald's Corp., the franchise owner and the store manager for $3 million in damages, according to the AP, for "suffering, embarrassment and the cost of having to move to a new home." The suit says that Sherman left the phone at the McDonald's in July and that employees promised to secure it until he returned.
RELATED ARTICLES
Apple Updates Maps, Apps in iPhone Firmware 2.2Two More iPhone Lawsuits Hit the Courts
For more stories on this topic:
Whatever the outcome of the case, security experts say it's another example of how unauthorized access and distribution of inappropriate or confidential content can ignite corporate brand disasters and data security headaches.
"Photos like nude shots of someone's spouse are not the only sensitive data on a smartphone," Tom Cross, IBM X-force researcher, told InternetNews.com. The X-Force is a research group within IBM’s Internet Security Systems division.
"Users are carrying these devices everywhere as they use it for both work and life," explained Cross.
Security measures and a backup plan
LATEST NEWSFlat Lines Seen for eCommerce Holiday SpendReport: Economy Won't Dim Apple's iPhoneID Thieves Hit Federal Credit Unions, ConsumersMainframe Breach at LensCrafters Parent Hits 59KHP, Cisco Weigh on Tech Stocks
Whether the Arkansas incident bears out -- there have been some online reports it's a hoax -- companies can learn several lessons, Cross said.
The first is educating users about keeping sensitive and personal data off the device, said Cross. While users will nod and agree about why it's important, Cross said IT has to acknowledge that it will happen and should put security measures in place as a backup plan.
Cross recommends strong password protection policies, including one that shuts down a device once it goes inactive for five or ten seconds. Such automatic locking will stop unauthorized access to confidential information, he explained.
"You have to put policies in place and manage those policies. It's not just a matter of losing a $400 device. It's the case of losing invaluable data," he said.
The next step is instructing employees to notify IT immediately once a device goes missing. That way the smartphone can either be remotely locked or wiped clean. This could go a long way toward preventing such 'iPhone nude woman' scenarios, said Cross.
As the security expert noted, IT teams don't have the time to check smartphones for inappropriate content such as nude photos. But they should make the time to put good security policies and management strategies in place, he said.
'Pregnant man' is expecting AGAIN, four months after the birth of his first child
A man who was born a woman but gave birth after having a sex-change operation is expecting a second child.American Thomas Beatie had his breasts removed, lived outwardly as a man and legally changed his gender to male.
Once known as Tracy Lagondino, the 34-year-old said he retained his femalesex organs because he intended to give birth one day.
Beatie and wife Nancy, of Oregon, US, made worldwide headlines earlier this year when he announced his pregnancy in gay magazine The Advocate.
The couple took the controversial step because Nancy had undergone a hysterectomy and they wanted a biological child.
In June, Beatie gave birth to a daughter, Susan Juliette, having been inseminated at home by his wife Nancy, 46, with sperm from a donor.
Veteran US broadcaster Barbara Walters exclusively interviewed Beatie and wife Nancy for a special show aired on Friday night on ABC.
But Walters revealed that the couple are expecting another child.
She said: 'I asked him if he was taking testosterone again and he said no. Because he was pregnant again.'
ABC confirmed that Beatie, 34, also told Walters: 'I feel good. Everything is right on track.'
During the interview, Beatie revealed that he had a natural birth on June 29 this year and that his wife cut the baby’s umbilical cord.
Nancy, 46, has been able to express milk and has been breastfeeding the baby.
She already has two grown-up daughters from her first marriage.
He became legally male after undergoing sex change surgery in 2002 and hormone treatment, but opted to keep his female reproductive organs.
Beatie told Walters that they regard themselves as a normal, heterosexual family.
He said: 'We are a man, woman and child.
'Pregnant man' is expecting AGAIN, four months after the birth of his first child
By Alex LloydLast updated at 1:59 AM on 14th November 2008
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A man who was born a woman but gave birth after having a sex-change operation is expecting a second child.
American Thomas Beatie had his breasts removed, lived outwardly as a man and legally changed his gender to male.
Once known as Tracy Lagondino, the 34-year-old said he retained his femalesex organs because he intended to give birth one day.
Beatie and wife Nancy, of Oregon, US, made worldwide headlines earlier this year when he announced his pregnancy in gay magazine The Advocate.
Expecting again: Thomas Beatie, pictured while pregnant with his first child Susan, is expecting a baby in June
The couple took the controversial step because Nancy had undergone a hysterectomy and they wanted a biological child.
In June, Beatie gave birth to a daughter, Susan Juliette, having been inseminated at home by his wife Nancy, 46, with sperm from a donor.
Veteran US broadcaster Barbara Walters exclusively interviewed Beatie and wife Nancy for a special show aired on Friday night on ABC.
But Walters revealed that the couple are expecting another child.
She said: 'I asked him if he was taking testosterone again and he said no. Because he was pregnant again.'
ABC confirmed that Beatie, 34, also told Walters: 'I feel good. Everything is right on track.'
During the interview, Beatie revealed that he had a natural birth on June 29 this year and that his wife cut the baby’s umbilical cord.
Nancy, 46, has been able to express milk and has been breastfeeding the baby.
She already has two grown-up daughters from her first marriage.
He became legally male after undergoing sex change surgery in 2002 and hormone treatment, but opted to keep his female reproductive organs.
Beatie told Walters that they regard themselves as a normal, heterosexual family.
He said: 'We are a man, woman and child.
Baby joy: Beatie with his baby daughter Susan Juliette in July
'It's ironic that we are so different but yet, we're just a family, just the same as anyone else.
I am my daughter's father, and that's all I'll ever be to her.'
He acknowledged that Susan, who was named after his late mother, may face teasing at school but said that was not a good reason not to have a child.
'We'll just have to raise her with enough strength and resiliency in order to with stand anything that the world throws at her,' he said.
'We're gonna raise her acknowledging that diversity exists in the world and be respectful of other people.
'I think that you're not living a full authentic life unless you're being true to yourself.
'And in this life, we got to choose who we want to be and how we're gonna live our lives.
'And that includes being a pregnant man.'
Beatie also paid tribute to his wife Nancy, who he married in 2003.
He said: 'Nancy is a very unique person.
'She loves and likes people because of who they are, on the inside.
'She was not attracted to me because I was female or male, but because I was just me.'
Nancy added: 'I don't like labels.
'You know, I'm just in love with this person. This person was female in the beginning and is now male. This is who I'm attracted to.'
Of mice and men: 10 sex lessons from the wild
Ahh, science. The glorious search for truth. Sexploration stands second to none in its admiration for the lab-coated monks of the scientific community, their adherence to esoteric protocols, their exotic worship of PowerPoint, their reliance on “models” for sex.
Now when you or I think of “models” for sex we might think of Adriana Lima or that guy in the Calvin Klein underwear ads with the abs that no man possesses outside the pages of GQ. But that’s because we were liberal arts majors. When a scientist thinks of a model, he or she thinks of nematode worms, or rats, or zebra fish or monkeys.
Or, if we’re talking about sex, deer mice. Last week, a study titled “Coping and copulation may help calculate diabetes risk” was published, and Sexploration, ever on the watch for news that promises better health through sex, began reading the accompanying press release with the rising hope that more and better sex will be found to lower our risk of diabetes.
“Discussion of a man’s background, attitude and sexual history isn’t just the fodder of ‘Sex and the City’ episodes — in the future, it could also be a way of evaluating his risk of diabetes,” it began.
But then it said that “males of a calmer, more monogamous species [of deer mouse] had a higher level of stress hormones and a superior ability to regulate blood sugar in comparison to males of a less calm, less monogamous species.” This led researchers to conclude that “superior stress tolerance and blood sugar regulation is related to monogamy in these mice.”
The implication, of course, is that men ought to get themselves married because loyal mice regulate blood sugar better than their randy cousins. While I admired the way the writer of the press release labored to create a link between mice and men, I wondered what would happen if people based their sex and relationship lives on the results of animal studies.
So, in the interest of reader service, Sexploration reviewed recent scientific literature and culled the best advice we could find by directly extrapolating from animals to people. Here are the lessons to be learned.
1. Do not turn sex into warfare.According to a pair of British scientists, “sexual conflict is ubiquitous across taxa” and nobody winds up happy. These biologists studied Trinidadian guppies and found that “male sexual harassment drives females into habitats that they otherwise do not prefer to occupy” — sort of like all-female gyms and the Lifetime channel.
2. Avoid weaponizing your penis.“The spectacular evolution of male genitalia that impose physical injury on females during mating has often been suggested to be a product of sexually antagonistic co-evolution,” wrote Swedish scientists. As you might expect, females are reluctant to mate with males wielding pain-inducing penises. This creates a risk of extinction. So while women may like the looks of that “spectacular” thing he carts around, we might all be better off if they chose those of us who are meekly average, you know, for the sake of humanity’s future. Oh, and beware of “spiny male genitalia [which] causes more harm to females during copulation.”
3. Try woman-on-top.Couldn’t all men take a lesson from the Mexican experiment showing that “when female rats are allowed to pace (control) the rate of sexual stimulation they receive … the aversive properties of mating are reduced”? After all, this column receives a lot of complaining letters from women in which the word “jackhammer” is used.
4. For a great afterglow, choose an orgy.Members of this same team of biologists also reported that “under semi-natural conditions sexual behavior in rats is highly promiscuous; they mate in groups and repeatedly change partners in the middle of copulation. This behavioral sequence allows both male and female to control the rate of sexual interaction, assuring the induction of a reward state outlasting the actual performance of coital responses.”
5. Gifts don’t always work.According to a British team, “nuptial gifts fail to resolve a sexual conflict.” Admittedly, the nuptial gifts they are talking about are compounds found in the ejaculate of a bush cricket, but still, I think we can all learn something here. While it may have worked for Kobe Bryant, gifts won’t necessarily fix a screwup.
6. Bulk up, dudes.In wild sheep living on an island off the coast of Scotland, “greater horn length, body size and good condition each independently influence a male’s ability to monopolize receptive females … we also find that larger testes are independently associated with both higher copulation rates and increased siring success.” Sigh.
7. Invest in lingerie and makeup.Of course women have pressure to be attractive too because, said Mexican biologists, while males may be motivated to have sex by nature, we might skip acting on that motivation in favor of watching “Star Trek” reruns if we do not have “an appropriate stimulus, a sexual incentive.”
Male rats can make do with the mere presence of a “sexually receptive female,” but men over the age of 25 might need a little booster and, being more visual than rats, said the scientists, might prefer an image of a sexual partner. Thus primed, we might “activate approach behaviors.” Whether this behavior amounts to “How about it, babe?” or a night at the Ritz-Carlton “will be determined by motivation and by the quality of the incentive stimulus, its attractivity.”
8. Don’t let her take this measurement.Animal biologists love prairie voles because unlike most rodents, they are often monogamous. The males are dutiful little critters right out of a Disney movie. So which guy gets the girl? And how does the girl choose? Well, she looks for the distance between his anus and his genitals, called ano-genital distance. “Not only did preferred males have significantly longer AGD and larger testes than nonpreferred males, but AGD was directly related to the testes’ size, seminal vesicle size and the number of sperm stored. We … discovered that males that were members of a pair bond had longer AGD than single males.”
The researchers did not say if a house on the beach compensates for short AGD.
9. It won’t help to pee on her house.“Mate choice is likely based on a complex suite of characters, but at least in prairie voles, the frequency of scent marking by males does not appear to be one of them.” Whew!
Click for related content
Intimate lawsuits: From bedroom to courtroomLove and war: He's deployed, his wife is flirting Sexploration: Sexy anime goes mainstream Tell us: Can you save money by shacking up?
10. When all else fails, genetically alter us.Unlike their close cousins, meadow voles really get around. They are, in the words of one scientist, “socially promiscuous.” But by transferring just one gene into the brains of meadow voles, “we substantially increase partner preference formation. … We show that a change in the expression of a single gene in the larger context of pre-existing genetic and neural circuits can profoundly alter social behavior.”
Now when you or I think of “models” for sex we might think of Adriana Lima or that guy in the Calvin Klein underwear ads with the abs that no man possesses outside the pages of GQ. But that’s because we were liberal arts majors. When a scientist thinks of a model, he or she thinks of nematode worms, or rats, or zebra fish or monkeys.
Or, if we’re talking about sex, deer mice. Last week, a study titled “Coping and copulation may help calculate diabetes risk” was published, and Sexploration, ever on the watch for news that promises better health through sex, began reading the accompanying press release with the rising hope that more and better sex will be found to lower our risk of diabetes.
“Discussion of a man’s background, attitude and sexual history isn’t just the fodder of ‘Sex and the City’ episodes — in the future, it could also be a way of evaluating his risk of diabetes,” it began.
But then it said that “males of a calmer, more monogamous species [of deer mouse] had a higher level of stress hormones and a superior ability to regulate blood sugar in comparison to males of a less calm, less monogamous species.” This led researchers to conclude that “superior stress tolerance and blood sugar regulation is related to monogamy in these mice.”
The implication, of course, is that men ought to get themselves married because loyal mice regulate blood sugar better than their randy cousins. While I admired the way the writer of the press release labored to create a link between mice and men, I wondered what would happen if people based their sex and relationship lives on the results of animal studies.
So, in the interest of reader service, Sexploration reviewed recent scientific literature and culled the best advice we could find by directly extrapolating from animals to people. Here are the lessons to be learned.
1. Do not turn sex into warfare.According to a pair of British scientists, “sexual conflict is ubiquitous across taxa” and nobody winds up happy. These biologists studied Trinidadian guppies and found that “male sexual harassment drives females into habitats that they otherwise do not prefer to occupy” — sort of like all-female gyms and the Lifetime channel.
2. Avoid weaponizing your penis.“The spectacular evolution of male genitalia that impose physical injury on females during mating has often been suggested to be a product of sexually antagonistic co-evolution,” wrote Swedish scientists. As you might expect, females are reluctant to mate with males wielding pain-inducing penises. This creates a risk of extinction. So while women may like the looks of that “spectacular” thing he carts around, we might all be better off if they chose those of us who are meekly average, you know, for the sake of humanity’s future. Oh, and beware of “spiny male genitalia [which] causes more harm to females during copulation.”
3. Try woman-on-top.Couldn’t all men take a lesson from the Mexican experiment showing that “when female rats are allowed to pace (control) the rate of sexual stimulation they receive … the aversive properties of mating are reduced”? After all, this column receives a lot of complaining letters from women in which the word “jackhammer” is used.
4. For a great afterglow, choose an orgy.Members of this same team of biologists also reported that “under semi-natural conditions sexual behavior in rats is highly promiscuous; they mate in groups and repeatedly change partners in the middle of copulation. This behavioral sequence allows both male and female to control the rate of sexual interaction, assuring the induction of a reward state outlasting the actual performance of coital responses.”
5. Gifts don’t always work.According to a British team, “nuptial gifts fail to resolve a sexual conflict.” Admittedly, the nuptial gifts they are talking about are compounds found in the ejaculate of a bush cricket, but still, I think we can all learn something here. While it may have worked for Kobe Bryant, gifts won’t necessarily fix a screwup.
6. Bulk up, dudes.In wild sheep living on an island off the coast of Scotland, “greater horn length, body size and good condition each independently influence a male’s ability to monopolize receptive females … we also find that larger testes are independently associated with both higher copulation rates and increased siring success.” Sigh.
7. Invest in lingerie and makeup.Of course women have pressure to be attractive too because, said Mexican biologists, while males may be motivated to have sex by nature, we might skip acting on that motivation in favor of watching “Star Trek” reruns if we do not have “an appropriate stimulus, a sexual incentive.”
Male rats can make do with the mere presence of a “sexually receptive female,” but men over the age of 25 might need a little booster and, being more visual than rats, said the scientists, might prefer an image of a sexual partner. Thus primed, we might “activate approach behaviors.” Whether this behavior amounts to “How about it, babe?” or a night at the Ritz-Carlton “will be determined by motivation and by the quality of the incentive stimulus, its attractivity.”
8. Don’t let her take this measurement.Animal biologists love prairie voles because unlike most rodents, they are often monogamous. The males are dutiful little critters right out of a Disney movie. So which guy gets the girl? And how does the girl choose? Well, she looks for the distance between his anus and his genitals, called ano-genital distance. “Not only did preferred males have significantly longer AGD and larger testes than nonpreferred males, but AGD was directly related to the testes’ size, seminal vesicle size and the number of sperm stored. We … discovered that males that were members of a pair bond had longer AGD than single males.”
The researchers did not say if a house on the beach compensates for short AGD.
9. It won’t help to pee on her house.“Mate choice is likely based on a complex suite of characters, but at least in prairie voles, the frequency of scent marking by males does not appear to be one of them.” Whew!
Click for related content
Intimate lawsuits: From bedroom to courtroomLove and war: He's deployed, his wife is flirting Sexploration: Sexy anime goes mainstream Tell us: Can you save money by shacking up?
10. When all else fails, genetically alter us.Unlike their close cousins, meadow voles really get around. They are, in the words of one scientist, “socially promiscuous.” But by transferring just one gene into the brains of meadow voles, “we substantially increase partner preference formation. … We show that a change in the expression of a single gene in the larger context of pre-existing genetic and neural circuits can profoundly alter social behavior.”
eBay bans sale of Obama inauguration tickets
eBay has agreed to ban ticket sales for US President-elect Barack Obama's upcoming inauguration ceremony on its websites.
The online auction house arrived at the decision at the insistence of representatives from the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies (which, as you may suspect by their name, takes inaugural ceremonies pretty seriously).
Head of the committee, California Senator Dianne Feinstein, recently has been advocating against online scalping of inauguration tickets amidst an overwhelming public demand.
Only 240,000 tickets for the January 20 event are provided free to the public through members of Congress and the inauguration committee.
Feinstein said the overwhelming demand to attend the swearing-in ceremony has caused online scalping at sites like eBay's ticket venture StubHub and Craigslist for prices reaching as much as $40,000.
The inaugural committee sent out a warning last week that swearing-in tickets are only issued the week before the event and to "view any offers of tickets for sale with great skepticism.
After attending a meeting with the inaugural committee, eBay has agreed that banning ticket sales to the event is "in the best interest of all concerned."
An eBay rep told us it would police the ticket sales by way of its general methods and "state of the art anti-fraud technology."
"I want to thank eBay/StubHub for not allowing the sale of inaugural swearing-in ceremony tickets on any of its websites," Feinstein said today in a statement. "They have led the way and I hope other Internet companies will follow."
May as well follow while it's still an option. Feinstein said Monday she's drafting legislation that would make it a crime to scalp inaugural tickets. Those caught selling tickets would be charged with a misdemeanor and receive a "very hefty penalty." ®
The online auction house arrived at the decision at the insistence of representatives from the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies (which, as you may suspect by their name, takes inaugural ceremonies pretty seriously).
Head of the committee, California Senator Dianne Feinstein, recently has been advocating against online scalping of inauguration tickets amidst an overwhelming public demand.
Only 240,000 tickets for the January 20 event are provided free to the public through members of Congress and the inauguration committee.
Feinstein said the overwhelming demand to attend the swearing-in ceremony has caused online scalping at sites like eBay's ticket venture StubHub and Craigslist for prices reaching as much as $40,000.
The inaugural committee sent out a warning last week that swearing-in tickets are only issued the week before the event and to "view any offers of tickets for sale with great skepticism.
After attending a meeting with the inaugural committee, eBay has agreed that banning ticket sales to the event is "in the best interest of all concerned."
An eBay rep told us it would police the ticket sales by way of its general methods and "state of the art anti-fraud technology."
"I want to thank eBay/StubHub for not allowing the sale of inaugural swearing-in ceremony tickets on any of its websites," Feinstein said today in a statement. "They have led the way and I hope other Internet companies will follow."
May as well follow while it's still an option. Feinstein said Monday she's drafting legislation that would make it a crime to scalp inaugural tickets. Those caught selling tickets would be charged with a misdemeanor and receive a "very hefty penalty." ®
Lil Wayne Performs With Kid Rock At CMA Awards -- But Doesn't Say A Word
As he did at the VMAs in September, Lil Wayne joined Kid Rock onstage for a performance of the remix of Rock's "All Summer Long" at the Country Music Association Awards. But this time there was no verse from Weezy — in fact, he barely made a sound at all. He just acted as part of the band, bringing out his guitar and strumming the strings inaudibly alongside Kid Rock's guitarist.
Not having the New Orleans Fireman rhyme was a curious move, considering that Weezy's people put out a press release late Wednesday afternoon trumpeting the fact that Wayne was the first hip-hop act ever to perform on the CMAs.
A source close to the situation told MTV News on Thursday that Wayne didn't rap in order to keep things fresh — that the duo did not want to copy what they had done at the VMAs and figured Weezy playing guitar was a fly new take on their collaboration.
Watching on TV, you didn't even see Wayne until somewhere around the song's two-minute mark, when Kid came over and gave him five. Both performers wore Tennessee Titans jerseys: Kid with the number two on his, but instead of Rob Biranos' name on the back, Rock had his own name; Wayne sported a #28 Chris Johnson Jersey.
Big CMT winners included Kenny Chesney (who took home his fourth Entertainer of the Year award, tying Garth Brooks for the most wins in the category), George Strait (Single and Album of the Year, making him the biggest award-winner in CMA history) and Jennifer Nettles of Sugarland (the group won Vocal Duo of the Year, and Nettles won Song of the Year for Sugarland's "Stay").
The show was hosted by Carrie Underwood (who won Female Vocalist of the Year for the third consecutive time) and Brad Paisley. Taylor Swift performed her hit "Love Story" (and borrowed Miley Cyrus' boyfriend for the performance), and Shania Twain made her first major public appearance after a long absence.
Not having the New Orleans Fireman rhyme was a curious move, considering that Weezy's people put out a press release late Wednesday afternoon trumpeting the fact that Wayne was the first hip-hop act ever to perform on the CMAs.
A source close to the situation told MTV News on Thursday that Wayne didn't rap in order to keep things fresh — that the duo did not want to copy what they had done at the VMAs and figured Weezy playing guitar was a fly new take on their collaboration.
Watching on TV, you didn't even see Wayne until somewhere around the song's two-minute mark, when Kid came over and gave him five. Both performers wore Tennessee Titans jerseys: Kid with the number two on his, but instead of Rob Biranos' name on the back, Rock had his own name; Wayne sported a #28 Chris Johnson Jersey.
Big CMT winners included Kenny Chesney (who took home his fourth Entertainer of the Year award, tying Garth Brooks for the most wins in the category), George Strait (Single and Album of the Year, making him the biggest award-winner in CMA history) and Jennifer Nettles of Sugarland (the group won Vocal Duo of the Year, and Nettles won Song of the Year for Sugarland's "Stay").
The show was hosted by Carrie Underwood (who won Female Vocalist of the Year for the third consecutive time) and Brad Paisley. Taylor Swift performed her hit "Love Story" (and borrowed Miley Cyrus' boyfriend for the performance), and Shania Twain made her first major public appearance after a long absence.
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