TechRepublic's Bill Detwiler cracked open the Apple iPad for a look at the hardware inside the Apple tablet,

Click on link below for step by step:

http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2346-13625_11-439398.html?tag=nl.e099.dl100630&tag=nl.e099

Prostate Cancer - Generic Tests for Early Detection

Scientists may soon be able to answer the agonizing question facing men with prostate cancer: Does their cancer need immediate treatment or can it be left alone?

Some 218,000 American men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year. An estimated 85% of those tumors will grow so slowly that they will never cause problems. But the rest are aggressive and lethal. As of now, there's no way to tell early on which cancers are which, so tens of thousands of men undergo surgery or radiation each year for cancers that never needed treatment, risking impotence or incontinence in the process.

Several recent genetic discoveries could help doctors evaluate how aggressive a man's prostate cancer is much earlier. Scientists at the University of Michigan have identified at least 24 different kinds of prostate cancer of varying virulence whose DNA signatures can be read like a bar code. Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center researchers have identified other genetic subtypes of prostate cancer that seem to predict whether the tumor will be low or high risk. And Harvard Medical School scientists have found a specific gene that causes prostate cancers to spread. Some of the discoveries also could lead to new treatments, tailored specifically for the kind of prostate tumor a man has.

Such genetic tests for prostate cancers would go well beyond the current PSA test (for prostate-specific antigen) used for screening men in general. PSA tests have helped find prostate cancers at much earlier stages, saving thousands of lives in recent years. But PSA levels also rise for reasons that have nothing to do with cancer, prompting many men to have prostate biopsies each year that don't find cancer or that find tumors of the slow-growing variety.

Scientists say new prostate-cancer tests could be available in the not-too-distant future. "It won't be tomorrow, but if you go by the pace at which such technology entered the field of breast cancer, it will be several years [for new prostate tests], not a decade," says Charles Sawyers, chairman of human oncology and pathogenesis at Memorial Sloan-Kettering.

At the University of Michigan, researchers have focused mainly on what are known as gene fusions, in which DNA from some genes gets stuck to other genes, altering what they do. Two of the 24 types they have identified involve the same gene, known as RAF, that drives malignant melanoma, according to a report in the journal Nature Medicine this month. Although those two types make up only about 2% of the tumors studied so far, they are highly aggressive, killing an estimated 3,600 men each year.

Treatment for those prostate cancers is on the horizon. Several anti-RAF drugs to treat melanoma have regulatory approval or are in late-stage clinical trials. Early lab tests show that some of those drugs are effective against RAF prostate-cancer cells.

Researchers are closing in on ways to determine whether a prostate tumor is likely to metastasize, based on gene analyses. Click to enlarge image.

Most of the remaining prostate-cancer types involve fusions of a gene called ETS, and they are more or less virulent depending on which fragments of other genes are fused to them. Jonathan Simons, chief executive officer of the Prostate Cancer Foundation, which funds much of the Michigan research, likens the process to rebuilding car engines out of random automotive parts.

"If you have a tumor with a lawn-mower engine, it may look like a cancer, we may call it a cancer, but it may never be a problem in the life of a 72-year old man," he says. "But if you have a cancer with a bulky Dodge Hemi stuck to a BMW 850csi V-12 engine, that needs treatment."

Four of the 24 cancer types discovered, which together make up over 50% of the prostate cancers classified so far, have the equivalent of lawn-mower engines and probably don't have enough power to grow past the prostate gland, Dr. Simons says. Another 20% are more highly powered and could pose problems in the presence of other gene fusions.

And one of the most aggressive types, representing 10% to 15% of prostate cancers, appears to follow a different mechanism: It results when there are excess amounts of a protein known as SPINK1. Since the protein shows up in urine, the researchers say a urine test could be designed to measure its presence.

There could be more types, represented by different genetic bar codes. "We are finding more every month or so, filling in the gaps," says the lead investigator Arul Chinnaiyan, director of the Michigan Center for Translational Pathology. To validate the findings, researchers, who so far have studied some 300 tumor samples, plan to analyze at least 1,000 samples and to follow how the patients progress.

"We are not there yet, but within the next year, we hope to have a clinical lab test where we can predict what kind of cancer a man has," says Dr. Chinnaiyan.

Researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering are studying a different kind of genetic error involved in prostate cancer. Instead of two copies of a gene, some cancer cells have too many or too few, known as copy-number alterations.

In a study in the journal Cancer Cell last week, the researchers analyzed the copy-number alterations in 218 cancerous prostates surgically removed at Sloan-Kettering and found that they fell into six clusters. Those clusters corresponded closely with how quickly the patients' cancer returned, judging by their PSA.

"It was a surprise to us that so much prognostic information was there in the original samples after surgery," Dr. Sawyers says. Ideally, "we'd be able to tell a man, 'Your tumor looks like it's in cluster five, so you should get surgery and radiation and perhaps even more aggressive therapy. Or, you are in cluster two, so you can relax and maybe just get another biopsy in another year and see if your cluster has changed," he says.

Further testing at Sloan Kettering is continuing. The researchers have 1,000 additional samples from prostates removed more than 10 years ago and can correlate their findings with how the patients fared in that time.

In still another recent breakthrough, researchers at Harvard Medical School identified a gene pathway directly involved in prostate-cancer metastasis. They isolated a gene, DAB2IP, that acts as a brake for cancer. When too much of an enzyme, EZH2, is present, the DAB2IP gene is suppressed, removing the brake and allowing the cancer to spread.

"It's more than just correlation; it's cause and effect," says lead researcher Karen Cichowski, a cancer biologist, who demonstrated the process in mice in a study in Nature Medicine this year. The Harvard researchers also studied data from human prostate cancers and found that the patients with the most aggressive tumors had either excess EZH2 or too little DAB2IP or both.

These findings, too, could yield tests to predict how aggressive a patient's prostate cancer could be. Several biotech companies have drugs in the works to inhibit EZH2.

The various research findings complement each other by describing different ways that genes mutate as cancers evolve, says Dr. Chinnaiyan. He expects that diagnostic tests in the future will look at a variety of genes, as well as proteins, molecules and other "biomarkers" to predict how aggressive a cancer might be.

Another technique being applied to prostate cancer involves magnetic resonance spectroscopy, a form of imaging that tracks chemical changes in tissues. In a small study in the journal Science Translational Medicine this year, researchers at Harvard showed that the scanning technology can not only locate cancers within the prostate, but also has the potential to distinguish fast and slow-moving cancers.

Progress is also being made on ways to measure prostate cancers through simple blood and urine tests, or what scientists call "liquid biopsies." The biotech firm Gen-Probe Inc., working with the University of Michigan researchers, has developed a test for a gene called PCA3 that shows up in urine only when a man has prostate cancer.

For now, the PCA3 test is mainly useful to tell men who have a rising PSA level that they should have a biopsy as well, or for men who have a negative biopsy that might have missed cancer. Dr. Chinnaiyan hopes the PCA3 test can also check for gene fusions that can identify which type of prostate cancer a man has.

The PCA3 test is not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration, but it is approved for use in Europe and is available in several U.S. labs on an investigational basis.

In other prostate-cancer news, there's more evidence that cholesterol-lowering statin drugs may play a role in controlling the spread of prostate cancer. In a study in the journal Cancer, researchers at Duke University Medical Center and elsewhere analyzed the records of 1,319 men who had their prostates removed between 1988 and 2008 and found that 304 of them had a rising PSA level after surgery, which generally indicates that the cancer has reoccurred and spread. Men who were taking the equivalent of 20 mg of simvastatin a day were 43% less likely to see a recurrence. In men taking a higher dose, the risk of recurrence was reduced by 50%.

The researchers cautioned that the reduced risk could be due to factors other than statins, such as diet, exercise or smoking habits; only a randomized clinical trial could tell for sure. Five other recent studies also have found that statins appear to lower the risk for advanced prostate cancer.

wsj.com

AT&T Security Lapse Opens Door for iPad Hackers

The hackers who found private information about iPad users through a security hole in AT&T Inc.'s website earlier this month turned up two pieces of data: email addresses and an obscure number called the ICC-ID.

Attention has focused on the thousands of email addresses that were released, particularly those belonging to high-profile members of the military and the government. But some computer security experts say the exposure of the ICC-ID numbers is troubling, as they are the starting point for tracking a user's rough location and intercepting encrypted data.

To be sure, this isn't the easiest information to exploit. Tracking subscribers requires using the ICC-ID to derive another number first and then getting help from someone with basic access to telephone networks. Capturing data transmissions—setting aside the idea of tough encryption—is only possible with equipment that is expensive and typically limited to uses like law enforcement. Some security experts, however, say the ICC-ID number isn't as harmless as AT&T has implied.

"If those numbers do get out, there are ways to leverage them," said Richard Mislan, assistant professor at Purdue University specializing in cyber forensics. "There are services that allow you to track phones" and devices like the iPad that interact with cellular networks.

AT&T apologized for the security lapse and said no information beyond the email addresses and ICC-IDs was compromised. Experts say plugging further leaks from the ICC-IDs is relatively simple: Give all iPad users who might have been affected new SIM cards, the chip that enables wireless service.

AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said in a recent interview that the company would give a new SIM card to any user who asked for one. "Our objective is to make it very comfortable and secure for you to go out and transact business on the Internet," he said. "If you are not secure with that, it will limit where consumers are willing to go with these devices."

The ICC-ID number is basically a serial number for every device's SIM card. They're often written inside a cellphone or printed on the boxes in which devices are shipped. AT&T, in a June 13 note to iPad users, said the ICC-IDs and email addresses were the only information exposed. "Your password, account information, the contents of your email, and any other personal information were never at risk," the company wrote.

Security experts say the chain doesn't necessarily end there. The ICC-ID number could help hackers learn another, more critical piece of the wireless security puzzle known as the international mobile subscriber identity, or IMSI, number.

IMSI numbers, usually 15 digits, are like a user's driver's license on wireless networks and are used in part so carriers know whom to bill. They identify users' home networks and link to databases containing personal details, such as name, address and phone number, and a device's latest location on the network.

Carriers consider IMSI numbers so sensitive that they are transmitted from devices to cell towers as infrequently as possible. To protect subscriber confidentiality, network operators instead generate temporary IMSI numbers to place calls, send data or update a subscriber's location when they move to a new area.

Lee Reiber, a former cellphone forensics examiner with the Boise Police Department who now trains law enforcement agencies to obtain data from mobile phones and networks, says carriers including AT&T have made it possible to calculate the IMSI number from the ICC-ID. He says it can be as easy as rearranging some of the ICC-ID's digits.

The IMSI numbers are critical pieces of data that help law enforcement agencies work backward from mobile devices to identify the suspects who use them. They can also be used to track suspects and listen in to their cellphone calls, Mr. Reiber says. With the IMSI number, he says, it may be possible to track a person down to the level of a city or area of a city.

Police, using court orders, obtain that information directly from carriers. But others could get it with help from a company with access to systems called SS7 networks, which carry the information needed to route and connect calls. The SS7 networks can be used to identify the area of a city where a device last pinged a cell tower.

A range of companies, including text-message marketing firms and some mobile-service retailers, have access to SS7 systems. Marketers and retailers have only limited access to the SS7 system, but security experts fear the system could be manipulated to skirt those limits.

"There are ways to manipulate protocols within the telephony network to subvert access controls and extract information," says Don Bailey, a consultant with computer security consulting firm iSEC Partners.Companies, for example, could pretend to want to send a text message to a subscriber in order to uncover information about that subscriber's location.

wsj.com

Grab Yourself Some Dark Sunglasses

Here's a plan to revitalize Asbury Park Beach; some call it South Beach north.

Once among the top seaside resorts on the East Coast, Asbury Park is keeping abreast of vacationers' changing tastes by considering letting women go topless on on an eight-block stretch of the city beach.

On the road back from decades of decay, the city that was once one of the top beach resorts on the East Coast thinks this might work.

But unlike other secluded nude beaches in the Garden State, this one could be right in your face, with the boardwalk offering a prime view that some parents might not want junior to see.

The city council is considering a request from Reggie Flimlin, an Asbury Park woman who owns a yoga studio, to allow women to decide for themselves whether they want to wear bikini tops on the beach.

She says it's already happening on less populated beaches in the city's north end. "A lot of women are just organically deciding they want to sunbathe without their top," she said. "That's great, that's fine, and I have no problem with it."

The 48-year-old city resident has lived and sunbathed topless in Europe and Miami, where such conduct is paid little mind. "Being at the beach without a top is a choice I make," said Flimlin, 48. She said Asbury Park, with its thriving gay and lesbian community and its wildly diverse ethnic and racial population, has long been progressive.

"Asbury has always prided itself as having an open mind and being accepting and welcoming to a lot of different cultures and lifestyle choices," she said. "If not in Asbury Park, where else in New Jersey would a woman have the right to choose whether or not she has to wear a bathing suit top?"

Right now, that would be Gunnison Beach on Sandy Hook, part of the federal Gateway National Recreational Area, where total nude bathing is permitted in a secluded and private area. But there's no topless beach anywhere along its coastline.

Higbee Beach, a Cape May County beach that once permitted nude bathing now no longer does due to problems with sexual activity in the dunes and parking lot.

Asbury Park officials have called for a fully fleshed-out proposal during the July 7 City Council meeting to help determine whether the city’s northern stretch of surf would become New Jersey’s first “top optional” beach.

Attention men... make a concerted effort to be gentlemen once the topless beach gets the OK. Let’s try not to act like juveniles. If the proposal is passed, then grab yourself some dark sunglasses and try to behave.

Iconic Photo from WW II

It's one of the most iconic images to emerge from World War II.

Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt's photograph of an anonymous young sailor in a dark-blue uniform dipping a white-uniformed nurse backward while giving her a long kiss in the middle of Times Square on Aug. 14, 1945, symbolized the euphoria surrounding the news that the Japanese had surrendered and the war was finally over.

Edith Shain, a retired Los Angeles elementary school teacher who claimed to be the mystery nurse in the photo seen by millions around the world, died of cancer Sunday at her home in Los Angeles, said her son, Michael. She was 91.

Shain was a married, 27-year-old part-time nurse at Doctors Hospital in Manhattan when she joined the jubilant crowd in Times Square celebrating V-J Day.

"You can imagine how people felt. They were just elated," Shain said in a 2005 interview with The Times. "Someone grabbed me and kissed me, and I let him because he fought for his country. I closed my eyes when I kissed him. I never saw him."

When Eisenstaedt's photo ran in Life magazine the following week — he had neglected to get the names of his subjects, whose faces are obscured in the picture — Shain recognized herself but was too embarrassed to tell anyone it was her.

"But I knew it was me," she said. "I was wearing the same kind of shoes, and I had the same kind of seams in my stockings. And a little bit of my slip was showing."

Immediately after the sailor kissed her, Shain said, she encountered a soldier who also wanted a kiss. But that was enough for her, and she and the friend she was with left Times Square.

Shain later moved to Los Angeles, where she worked as a nurse before becoming a longtime kindergarten and first-grade teacher at Hancock Park Elementary School. She was married and divorced three times and had three sons.

In 1980, no longer embarrassed by her Times Square encounter with the anonymous sailor and wanting a copy of the famous photo, Shain wrote to Life magazine and identified herself as the nurse.

Eisenstaedt himself flew out to meet her.

"He looked at my legs and said I was the one," Shain recalled.

Eisenstaedt gave Shain a copy of the photo and, according to The Times article, Life flew her to New York for a luncheon.

In one of his books that he later inscribed for her, Eisenstaedt wrote that she was "the one and only nurse" whom he had photographed in Times Square.

But Bobbi Baker Burrows, a Life editor familiar with the subject, told the Associated Press in 2008 that Eisenstaedt, who died in 1995, was never sure that Shain was the nurse in the photo.

Burrows recalled that when interest in the photo was renewed, Life ran an article saying, "If you are the sailor or the nurse in the picture, please step forward."

"We received claims from a few nurses and dozens of sailors, but we could never prove that any of them were the actual people, and Eisenstaedt himself just said he didn't know," she said.

Carl Muscarello, a former New York City police detective, was one of the men who have claimed to be the sailor in the photo.

"Everything points to him," Shain told the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel in 1995. "He was tall enough that he could execute that form."

During the 60th anniversary of V-J Day in 2005, Shain and Muscarello appeared together in Times Square, where they exchanged a kiss for photographers and a large crowd.

Shain, however, was still not convinced that Muscarello was the sailor who had bussed her.

"I can't say he isn't," she said. "I just can't say he is. There is no way to tell."

Born July 29, 1918, in Tarrytown, N.Y., Shain graduated from a nursing school in New York and earned a bachelor's degree in education at New York University. She retired from teaching in 1985.

"The famed kissing nurse," as the New York Daily News once called her, often served as honorary grand marshal of Veterans Day and Memorial Day parades and spoke to World War II veterans' groups.

She was scheduled to appear in Times Square in August for a V-J Day celebration.

She also had been serving as national spokesperson for a grassroots initiative to establish a permanent national day of remembrance on the second Sunday of every August to honor the men and women of the World War II generation.

"She used to call herself an accidental celebrity, and she felt she should use that celebrity for the common men and women of the World War II generation," said Warren Hegg, national supervisor of the Keep the Spirit of '45 Alive initiative.

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-edith-shain-20100624,0,4968153.story

Roswell Incident - 13 Years Ago Today

Thirteen years ago today, on June 24, 1997, the Air Force released a report on the so-called "Roswell Incident," suggesting the alien bodies witnesses reported seeing in 1947 were actually life-sized dummies.

The Roswell UFO Incident was the alleged recovery of extra-terrestrial debris, including alien corpses, from an object which crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, USA, in June or July, 1947. Since the late 1970s the incident has been the subject of intense controversy and the subject of conspiracy theories as to the true nature of the object which crashed. The United States military maintains that what was actually recovered was debris from an experimental high-altitude surveillance balloon belonging to a classified program named "Mogul"; however, many UFO proponents maintain that in fact a crashed alien craft and bodies were recovered, and that the military then engaged in a cover up. The incident has turned into a widely known pop culture phenomenon, making the name Roswell synonymous with UFOs. It ranks as one of the most publicized and controversial alleged UFO incidents.

On July 8, 1947, Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) public information office in Roswell, New Mexico, issued a press release stating that personnel from the field's 509th Bomb Group had recovered a crashed "flying disc" from a ranch near Roswell, sparking intense media interest. The following day, the press reported that Commanding General of the Eighth Air Force stated that, in fact, a radar-tracking balloon had been recovered by the RAAF personnel, not a "flying disc." A subsequent press conference was called, featuring debris from the crashed object that confirmed the weather balloon description.

The case was quickly forgotten and almost completely ignored, even by UFO researchers, for more than 30 years. Then, in 1978, physicist and ufologist Stanton T. Friedman interviewed Major Jesse Marcel who was involved with the original recovery of the debris in 1947. Marcel expressed his belief that the military had covered up the recovery of an alien spacecraft. His story spread through UFO circles, being featured in some UFO documentaries at the time. In February 1980, The National Enquirer ran its own interview with Marcel, garnering national and worldwide attention for the Roswell incident.

Additional witnesses and reports emerged over the following years. They added significant new details, including claims of a huge military operation dedicated to recovering alien craft and aliens themselves, at as many as 11 crash sites, and alleged witness intimidation. In 1989, former mortician Glenn Dennis put forth a detailed personal account, wherein he claimed that alien autopsies were carried out at the Roswell base.

In response to these reports, and after congressional inquiries, the General Accounting Office launched an inquiry and directed the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force to conduct an internal investigation. The result was summarized in two reports. The first, released in 1995, concluded that the reported recovered material in 1947 was likely debris from a secret government program called Project Mogul, which involved high altitude balloons meant to detect sound waves generated by Soviet atomic bomb tests and ballistic missiles. The second report, released in 1997, concluded that reports of recovered alien bodies were likely a combination of: innocently transformed memories of military accidents involving injured or killed personnel; innocently transformed memories of the recovery of anthropomorphic dummies in military programs like Project High Dive conducted in the 1950s; and hoaxes perpetrated by various witnesses and UFO proponents.

The psychological effects of time compression and confusion about when events occurred explained the discrepancy with the years in question. These reports were dismissed by UFO proponents as being either disinformation or simply implausible. However, significant numbers of UFO researchers discount the probability that the incident had anything to do with aliens.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell_UFO_Incident

A Few Jokes...

thanks to the Big Boy for these !

What's In This Picture?

Hint: the picture was taken in 1956 ...when Pan American Airways was still around.

Answer: It's a hard disk drive from back in 1956... with 5 MB of storage.

In September 1956 IBM launched the 305 RAMAC, the first 'SUPER' computer with a hard disk drive.

The HDD weighed over a ton and stored an astonsihing 5 MB of data.

Don't you appreciate your 8 GB USB memory stick a bit more now?

iPhone 4 Pre-Order Fiasco Causes AT&T’s Servers to Buckle

If this were any other company, it would be considered a complete train wreck.

Consumers would be up-in-arms, demanding refunds, storming out of stores and swearing to not come back until these companies can get their acts together.

But this is Apple. That means that the truly faithful will 1) keep trying, no matter the obstacles thrown at them, and, 2) forgive the shortcomings the moment they get a confirmation saying the order was successful.

And the beauty of it is that this can pretty much happen without the PR team in Cupertino even having to think for a minute about “spin control.”

Seriously, at some point on June 16, some customers were reporting unauthorized access to other customers’ accounts. Customers were also reporting that their orders had gone through - and then were being canceled. Customers were reporting multiple charges to their credit cards.

But today, no one is talking about that. The only headline that matters today is: “Apple pre-sells 600,000 iPhones; Far exceeds expectations.”

Those who were persistent are suddenly among the elite group of consumers who will be first to get the iPhone 4 when it ships later this month.

Oh, wait, that ship date was changed to July 14 - no explanation given.

Oh, and the white iPhone you wanted? Yeah, that’s unavailable right now.

But, of course, none of this really matters, right?

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/why-are-apple-at-t-untouchables-on-iphone-pre-order-fiasco/35913?tag=nl.e539

Practice What You Preach Department

Today's "practice what you preach" sign was spotted at a BP gas station.

OK, we won't spill from the pump if you don't.

Quotes of the Day

When you try to dodge ownership of a problem, when you try to hide from responsibility, life will give you ownership and responsibility the hard way. - Peggy Noonan

Envision, create and believe in your own iniverse - and the universe will form around you. - Anonymous

Apple Unveils iPhone 4

Steve Jobs has unveiled the new iPhone 4, a thinner version of the company's popular smartphone.

The new device features a sharper exterior made of glass and stainless steel and features a front-facing camera that allows for video calls when connected to a Wi-Fi network. The device is 24% thinner than its predecessor, the 3GS, and has a stronger battery.

The iPhone 4 will come in two models. A version with 16 gigabytes of storage will cost $199 and a version with 32 gigabytes of storage will cost $299. The device will be released in the U.S. and four other countries on June 24, and be available in 18 more countries in July.

"When you hold this in your hands, it's unbelievable," said Mr. Jobs, wearing his trademark black mock turtleneck and jeans. The introduction of the device was marred by a glitch with Mr. Jobs initially having difficulty getting web pages to load and causing the largely enthusiastic crowd to go silent. Apple CEO Steve Jobs used the new iPhone during his presentation Monday in San Francisco. "I'm afraid we have a problem and I'm not going to be able to show you much today," said Mr. Jobs, who tried switching devices and also asked the audience to disconnect from the Wi-Fi network, before managing to connect. Mr. Jobs showed the device at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference held in San Francisco.

The iPhone has become the primary driver of Apple's profit growth since its launch in June 2007. The CEO said Apple is adding Microsoft Corp.'s Bing search engine to the iPhone, although Google Inc. will remain the default option.

The newest generation of the iPhone has been the subject of intense speculation, particularly since technology blog Gizmodo purchased a prototype that was apparently lost by an Apple employee. Apple has pursued the case tirelessly, calling in authorities and demanding—and getting—the phone back.

Mr. Jobs joked about the incident, telling the audience "some of you may have already seen this" when he displayed the iPhone 4 for the first time. Mr. Jobs also said the App Store, which sells downloadable programs that run on the machine, now features 225,000 apps. He added that 15,000 apps are submitted each week and that 95% of them are approved in seven days, responding to criticism that the app approval process can be cumbersome. He said developers had made more than $1 billion selling Apple apps.

As for the iPad, Mr. Jobs said the company has sold more than 2 million iPad tablets world-wide since its launch, making it the company's fastest-selling new product and a potential leg of new growth for the consumer electronics giant. Mr. Jobs said more than 5 million books have been downloaded in the device's first 65 days. "We've seen tremendous interest from publishers," Mr. Jobs said.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703303904575292703491815956.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEADNewsCollection

Best Mac OS X Software

Here's a round up of the best Mac OS X software in 2010.

Apple announced in late April that its annual Apple Design Awards, given every year since 1997 during its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, would only be awarded for iPhone and iPad apps this year.

Many long-time Mac OS X developers felt a little slighted, so Ars Technica, a web site, was inspired to pick up the torch and start giving out its own Ars Design Awards.

First we solicited nominations from our readers. Then we culled that list of thousands of nominations down to five nominees in each of five categories: Best New App, Best User Experience, Most Innovative App, Best Education App, and Best Student-created App. The top 12 nominees were also put to a vote by you to pick a Reader's Choice award.

So, here are the 2010 Mac OS X Ars Design Award winners:

• Best New Mac OS X App: Transmit 4 by Panic
  Runner up: 1Password 3 by Agile Web Solutions


• Best Mac OS X User Experience: Tweetie for Mac by atebits
  Runner up: Transmit 4 by Panic


• Most Innovative Mac OS X App: Dropbox by Dropbox
  Runner up: Snippets by Lucky Ants


• Best Mac OS X App for Education: Papers by Mekentosj
  Runner up: Soulver by Aqualia


• Best Student-created Mac OS X App: Schoolhouse 3 by Logan Collins
  Runner up: jitouch2 by Supasorn Suwajanakorn & Sukolsak Sakshuwong


• Reader's Choice Award: 1Password 3 by Agile Web Solutions
  Runner up: Dropbox by Dropbox

thanks H1 !

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/06/2010-ars-design-award-winners-for-mac-os-x-software.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss

http://arstechnica.com/site/about-ars-technica.ars

Mars Simulator - Locked Up for 520 Days

Scientists in Russia launched an ambitious Mars spaceflight simulation Thursday – one that locks six volunteers away for a record-setting 520 days to practice every step of a mission to the red planet without ever leaving Earth.

The Mars500 project, a joint experiment by Russia, the European Space Agency and China, began at 5:49 a.m. EDT (0949 GMT) as the hatches to the mock Mars spaceship were shut at Russia's Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP) in Moscow. Three Russians, two Europeans and one Chinese volunteer make up the experiment's six-man crew.

"Goodbye Sun, goodbye Earth, we are leaving for Mars!" wrote French engineer Romain Charles, one of ESA's two crewmembers in the simulation, in a mission diary on Wednesday.

The Mars simulation is expected to last until November 2011, with the crew relying on supplies of food, equipment and other essentials packed inside their mock spaceship. Only electricity, water and some air will be supplied from the outside, ESA officials said.

Charles is locked in the Mars500 simulator with fellow European Diego Urbina, Russian engineers Alexei Sitev and Mikhail Sinelnikov, surgeon Sukhrob Kamolov and physiologist Alexander Smoleevsky. Chinese astronaut trainer Wang Yue rounds out the crew. One of the Russians serves as a backup for the six men inside the simulator.

"The internationalism of Mars500 does not only involve the crew, but also the researchers who come from so many countries that I could easily surpass the word limit in this blog post," wrote Urbina, an Italian engineer, wrote in a mission diary post. "This is for sure a strong point of Mars500, as no human flight to the Red Planet will be possible by one single nation."

Each of the volunteers will earn about $99,000 for their participation in the 18-month endurance trial, which will simulate the 250-day flight to Mars, a landing and surface stay of up to 30 days, and then the 240-day trip back to Earth.

This Mars500 project follows shorter 105-day and 14-day simulations in the same Mars spaceship simulator in 2009. If successful, it will be the longest high-fidelity spaceflight simulation in history, outlasting the real six- and seven-month missions by astronauts and cosmonauts to the International Space Station.

The longest any human has spent in space on a single mission is 438 days, a record set in 1995 by Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov on the Mir space station. But if Russia, NASA and their international partners hope to one day send human explorers to Mars – a goal set in the United States by President Barack Obama in April – much longer missions will be needed.

"The duration of the mission and its focus on behavioral and physiological issues is really the benefit of this study," American researcher David Dinges, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dinges is leading the only American study attached to the international Mars500 project, an $800,000 investigation for the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) to study the psychological effects of ultra long-duration isolation. In all, some 100 experiments are planned for the Mars500 crew during their mission.

There are no windows in the Mars500 simulator and all communications will be routed through a simulated Mission Control that plans to replicate the 20-minute lag between signals crossing the gulf between Mars and Earth.

"The confinement and isolation and the time lag are very much like what we'll be experiencing with a trip to Mars," Dinges told SPACE.com before heading to Moscow for today's hatch-closing. "Our focus is on stability of attention and measure of performance."

The Mars500 experiment's mock Mars ship contains about 2,152 square-feet (200 square-meters) of space. It is equipped with a medical and scientific research area, living quarters, kitchen, greenhouse, and exercise area. A simulated Mars landscape, Mars base and landing vehicle are also included, along with vital facilities like bathrooms and other essentials.

But while large, the Mars mission simulator is far from palatial, though some modules are lined with wood paneling to increase crew comfort.

"It is very much like three or four Winnebagos connected by tunnels that you crawl through," Dinges said. "I think the Russians did, in fact, do a very good job" recreating the conditions of a Mars spaceship, he added.

The Mars500 crew, like real-life astronauts, will have eight-hour work days, with the rest of each day split for equal amounts of free time and sleep.

The volunteers will have weekends off, but must exercise two hours a day like space station astronauts. They will only get to shower once a week.

"The physiological aspects of the experiments are also of great interest," ESA officials said in a statement. "Their bodies will start to adapt to new conditions – a closed environment with restricted space can quickly lead to poor physical condition."

One of ESA's experiments calls on the Mars500 crew to play tailored video games to study the potential for electronic assistants for astronauts on long-duration crews. The games will be played once every two weeks by three crewmates at a time, and include a multi-player cooperative game, a single-player lunar lander simulation and a collaborative training system scenario, ESA officials said.

Scientists from all of the studies planned during the Mars500 mission are eager to see the results, but there is still some uncertainty into how it will turn out. The Irish online betting service Paddy Power is already taking bets for which crewmember will quit the simulation first.

"It's hard to know what will happen," Dinges said. "I'm just hoping that the crew will be able to complete the mission."

http://www.space.com/

AT&T's Wireless Pricing - Why Complicate Matters?

Simplicity and convenience is what iPhones and smartphones are all about.

Unfortunately, AT&T now wants to complicate matters by charging wireless subscribers on data use.

Instead of being able to pay $30 a month for unlimited data use, new AT&T customers will be given the option of paying $15 a month for up to 200 megabytes or $25 for 2 gigabytes, with added charges if they exceed those ceilings. AT&T says 98% of its smartphone customers consume less than 2 gigabytes a month.

The problem is the options are 200 MB (for people who have a smartphone but probably shouldn’t) and 2 GB (which will work for most, but certainly not high end users streaming video and/or tethering).

How about these options: for most BlackBerry users and people who have a smartphone and don’t know what to do with it), $20/month for 1 GB/month (good for most), and $30 for 5/GB (for the high end data hog).

If you are going to nickle and dime us on data charges (and text messages, don’t think we forgot about that), how about some roll over megabytes?

AT&T will stop selling unlimited Internet data plans. As the # 2 U.S. wireless carrier by subscribers, AT&T is trying to market as offering "lower prices for most users of mobile devices".

The risk for consumers, say some analysts, is that while the thresholds that AT&T has set look high for the moment, the introduction of faster wireless networks and more-advanced devices could make it easier for subscribers to exceed them in the near future.

But developers of mobile-device software worry that the monthly usage limits in AT&T's new plans could prompt consumers to fret about exceeding their data allotments each time they consider downloading a new game or firing up an application. Such hesitance could dim the growth prospects of the wireless-application market just as it is getting off the ground.

Bart Decrem, CEO of Tapulous, maker of the popular Tap Tap games for Apple Inc.'s iPhone, says that if consumers perceive limits on their data consumption, it "could dampen people's appetite for downloading apps and engaging with them over the cellular network."

"It has pretty profound implications," says Kevin Talbot, co-managing partner of the BlackBerry Partners Fund, a $150 million venture-capital fund that invests in wireless applications. "We will see a new paradigm play out around efficiency."

How consumers will react to the change will affect not only their bills, but a key area of growth for wireless carriers, which are betting that revenue from selling data services will rise fast enough to outpace the decline in their revenue from ordinary cellphone calls.

Carriers also want the power variable pricing gives them to charge for or discourage demand for their network capacity. Some developers of apps for devices like the iPhone worry AT&T's pricing shift could discourage downloads. AT&T views its move in part as a trial of how consumers react to price signals.

Justin Esgar, who runs Virtua Computers Inc., a consulting firm that advises businesses that use Apple computers and phones, worries that the new pricing system ties customers' costs to measurements they don't really understand. "No one really knows how much data they're downloading to their phone," he says.

Some mobile-device users say they will limit their consumption of data. Alayne Gyetvai, chief information officer for Tessera Inc., which licenses and delivers miniaturization technologies for components found in electronic devices, says she will have to monitor her employees' usage to ensure they don't go over the 2-gigabyte limit.

Stuart Carlaw, an analyst at ABI Research, says AT&T's tiered pricing model will quickly look outdated. "There's only one direction you can go with data usage," Mr. Carlaw says. Sprint Nextel Corp. recently released the HTC Evo, a new phone that works on its fourth-generation wireless network, and which allows consumers to conduct two-way video chats. New applications like this place heavy demands on wireless networks. Pressure to conserve bandwidth could help some smartphone manufacturers, like BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd., which has put a premium on efficient use of networks.

A study released by Consumer Reports in February found that consumers using iPhones eat up an average of 273 megabytes of data a month, compared with 54 megabytes for BlackBerry users and 150 megabytes for consumers of other smartphones. "Consumers will start to ask carriers which handsets are the most efficient," predicts Mr. Talbot of the BlackBerry Partners Fund, whose investors include RIM. "Handset makers will start to push those advantages."

WSJ.com

http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/06/05/new-att-data-plans/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheBoyGeniusReport+%28Boy+Genius+Report%29

British Airways Ad - What Were They Thinking?

Recently, British Airways advertised and discussed its downloadable, paperless boarding passes in an internal staff magazine called LHR News.

There was something odd though: The sample boarding pass pictured in the magazine is issued to Mr. Osama Bin Laden.

The airline said that it's looking into how this "mistake" occurred.

The photo accompanies an article about a new mobile phone boarding system, which allows smartphone users to print out their boarding passes when they're away from their desks.

The photo shows an iPhone displaying an image of the mocked-up boarding pass bearing the name of the passenger: "Bin Laden/Osama".

It also shows the passenger as having a Northwest Airlines frequent-flyer number, a seat in first class and a departure date of October 26, 2010.

Bin Laden is on the FBI's 10 most wanted list and the US government has offered a reward of $US $50 million for information leading to his capture.

"A mistake has been made in this internal publication and we are working to find out how this occurred," British Airways said in a response issued through its Twitter channel.

Guess that means Mr. Bin Laden is not flying first class on October 26 after all.

http://gizmodo.com/5553906/british-airways-ad-implies-osama-bin-laden-is-a-frequent-flyer?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+gizmodo%2Ffull+%28Gizmodo%29

thanks H1

Graydon Pool - Now An Endangered Historic Site

Graydon Pool is a 2.8-acre stream-fed swimming pool, part of a lush 7-acre park in Ridgewood, N.J. was ranked as one of the state’s most endangered historic sites by Preservation New Jersey.

Graydon became the village’s first public park after the land was set aside a century ago this month. Its pool — called a "plake" for its natural setting and construction — was built in 1918 by damming the Ho-Ho-Kus Brook. It was expanded in 1936 as part of the federal Works Progress Administration, but remains at heart a rustic swimming hole.

And that’s the problem — at least when it comes to public perception. The plake has a sandy bottom. Its waters are far from the glistening aqua color that Americans have come to expect. Swimmers sometimes encounter minnows and ducks.

GRAYDON POOL landed on a top-10 list this week — but it was hardly an honor. The 2.8-acre stream-fed swimming pool, part of a lush 7-acre park in Ridgewood, was ranked as one of the state’s most endangered historic sites by Preservation New Jersey.

Graydon became the village’s first public park after the land was set aside a century ago this month. Its pool — called a "plake" for its natural setting and construction — was built in 1918 by damming the Ho-Ho-Kus Brook. It was expanded in 1936 as part of the federal Works Progress Administration, but remains at heart a rustic swimming hole.

And that’s the problem — at least when it comes to public perception. The plake has a sandy bottom. Its waters are far from the glistening aqua color that Americans have come to expect. Swimmers sometimes encounter minnows and ducks.

Ridgewood prides itself on its tastefully restored, stately homes, municipal buildings and downtown. But over the years, historic Graydon Pool was nudged off that list. Some residents soured on a setting that was perhaps too natural, what with all the leaves, silt and geese. A municipal committee put forth a controversial $13 million plan to replace the plake with four concrete, chlorinated pools. The recession has stalled that plan. At least for now.

What a relief. Any town can dig, cement and paint a chlorinated pool — or even four — anytime. Only Ridgewood can tend this historic plake. Especially in crowded, frenzied North Jersey, such subdued freshwater pools should be celebrated and protected. Just look to the Highlands Natural Pool in Ringwood, where a robust volunteer effort has kept it clean and popular for 75 years.

Happily, the good work in Ridgewood has already begun. As one committee planned for the plake’s replacement, another effort emerged to promote and modernize Graydon as it is. New natural chemicals, as well as some chlorine, are helping keep the water clean. New diffusers are aerating the water, which is now clear to a depth of 12 feet. Commonsense approaches to discouraging geese are underway, including visits by goose-chasing dogs and covering the plake’s rafts with tarps at night.

Any pool needs constant tending, whether it relies on chemicals or natural filters and outflow to keep bacteria at bay. Replacing this historic, natural pool with painted concrete wouldn’t rid Ridgewood of that responsibility. It would only rid Ridgewood of its most unique feature. Preserve Graydon Pool.

Ridgewood prides itself on its tastefully restored, stately homes, municipal buildings and downtown. But over the years, historic Graydon Pool was nudged off that list. Some residents soured on a setting that was perhaps too natural, what with all the leaves, silt and geese. A municipal committee put forth a controversial $13 million plan to replace the plake with four concrete, chlorinated pools. The recession has stalled that plan. At least for now.

What a relief. Any town can dig, cement and paint a chlorinated pool — or even four — anytime. Only Ridgewood can tend this historic plake. Especially in crowded, frenzied North Jersey, such subdued freshwater pools should be celebrated and protected. Just look to the Highlands Natural Pool in Ringwood, where a robust volunteer effort has kept it clean and popular for 75 years.

Happily, the good work in Ridgewood has already begun. As one committee planned for the plake’s replacement, another effort emerged to promote and modernize Graydon as it is. New natural chemicals, as well as some chlorine, are helping keep the water clean. New diffusers are aerating the water, which is now clear to a depth of 12 feet. Commonsense approaches to discouraging geese are underway, including visits by goose-chasing dogs and covering the plake’s rafts with tarps at night.

Any pool needs constant tending, whether it relies on chemicals or natural filters and outflow to keep bacteria at bay. Replacing this historic, natural pool with painted concrete wouldn’t rid Ridgewood of that responsibility. It would only rid Ridgewood of its most unique feature.

Preserve Graydon Pool.

http://www.northjersey.com/news/opinions/editorials/94560924_Graydon_s_charm.html

Rare Fish with Hands

Found mostly off the coast of Tasmania and Australia, the rare handfish are solitary, slow-moving creatures. They use their fins to walk on the seafloor, rather than swimming. They could be our ancestors, before we emerged from the sea.

National Geographic has a series of articles on these fish, which are spotted so infrequently that it's been hard for scientists to study them. There are only 14 species of handfish, and they lay very few eggs. Most are endangered.

They eat by wandering very slowly across the seafloor, eating worms and crustaceans. Though they make an easy target for predators, they manage to escape being eaten because they have extremely toxic skin.

thanks H1 and National Geo

Pixels take over New York City !

Pixels take over New York City !

Apple iPad: 5 Annoyances

Here are 5 problems people have with the iPad as presently designed (but I'd still like one):

5. The Glossy Screen

The glossy screen is OK on a laptop, it’s another thing entirely on a touchscreen device that you are constantly putting your fingers on.

Within a few minutes of use, the iPad’s glass display gets fingerprints all over it and the screen is hideous to look it. Combine that with the fact that the glossy display has a wicked glare problem that makes it difficult to use outdoors and in office buildings with overhead florescent lights and it makes the iPad a much less enjoyable device to use if you don’t have a screen protector. You can buy anti-glare film to prevent this problem for $25.00

4. Docking in Portrait Mode

If you want to use the iPad as a laptop replacement, Apple offers a Keyboard Dock ($70) that allows you to sit at a desk and type out some serious documents and emails. However, the keyboard stand only works in portrait mode because the iPad only has a doc connector on the bottom.

This is a serious nuisance for a couple reasons. First, we’re all trained to work in landscape mode when we sit at a desktop or a laptop. And second, most apps that you’ll want to use when docked–email and productivity apps–are faster to navigate in landscape mode. Heck, Apple’s own Keynote app doesn’t even work in Portrait mode. It refuses to shift.

The best workaround for this is to buy an iPad stand like Griffin’s A-Frame ($50) or JaDu’s Skadoosh ($58) and place the iPad in it in landscape mode, and then use Apple’s Bluetooth Wireless Keyboard ($70) instead of the Keyboard Dock.

3. It’s Awkward to Hold

The first time you hold the iPad in your hands and quickly flip through some full-sized Web pages with a few flicks of your fingers, it feels great. It’s an especially liberating experience when you’re sitting on the couch or in bed at night.

The problem is that once you get past about 30 minutes, the device gets pretty heavy and then it gets awkward to try to prop it up against your legs or lean it against something or find a place to set it where you can comfortably get a good viewing angle (especially if you don’t have an antiglare film).

Then, it gets really awkward once you try to type on it. Holding it with two hands in portrait mode, it’s almost small enough to type on it with your thumbs like a smartphone. Holding it with two hands and trying to type in landscape mode won’t work because your thumbs won’t reach the middle of the keyboard (unless you have really big hands). In landscape mode you could hold it with one hand and hunt-and-peck with the other hand, but that’s too slow.

So, what most people seem to do is to put the iPad on a lap or a flat surface and then type like they would on a normal keyboard. At that point, you’re basically emulating a laptop, but the experience you get is not nearly as fast or natural. Apple’s official iPad Case ($40) helps a little bit since it folds into a stand, but it doesn’t take away all of the awkwardness.

2. Lack of Adobe Flash

Apple’s overzealous crusade against Adobe Flash (and Adobe’s whiny responses) are annoying enough. However, that soap opera has gotten so intense that it has almost begun to cloud the issue that a lot of very good Web sites have been rendered useless because of this little showdown.

The Flash issue is bad enough on iPhone, but most of users rely on apps more than the open Web on iPhone. The iPad is much more of a Web browsing device and the lack of Flash breaks a lot of sites with Web video, animations, analytics and reports, and creative designs.

It is a massive annoyance to try to do some work, browsing, or reading on the iPad, only to find out that one of the sites you need to access uses Flash, so you’re forced to put down the iPad and go sit at a desktop or fire up a laptop.

1. The PC Umbilical Cord

To do everything you need to do on the iPad, you still need to connect it regularly to a PC or a Mac. You have to connect in order to sync up your latest podcasts and media files. You need to sync to get OS updates. You need to sync in order to get your latest business documents on the iPad.

So what happens if you only want to carry the iPad–and no laptop–on a business trip? You’ll have to sync all of your files before you go. What if you want to download a podcast or a video while you’re on the road? You’ll have to do it manually through the iTunes app and hope you can catch a decent Wi-Fi or 3G connection. It would also be nice if there was an Ethernet dongle for the iPad, for when you’re in the office or at a hotel without in-room Wi-Fi.

However, for corporate users, the biggest problem with the iPad’s PC umbilical cord is syncing business documents. The iPad can be a great device for reading PDFs and long documents, but there needs to be better ways to transfer those documents to the iPad.

A third-party app GoodReader ($1), which lets you sync files through iTunes and it can even recognize, save, and view some files from the Web. But, it would be much better to have functionality built into the OS to let you save files from the browser or email to the device’s local storage or to a cloud service.

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=4492&tag=nl.e101

Remastered "Exile On Main Street"

When Exile on Main Street was first released nearly 40 years ago, few expected it to gain recognition as a masterpiece.

Though the album was a commercial success, a number of critics thought it was too ragged.

Some panned it completely. But it's since become one of the most influential and adored rock albums of all time, thanks to its raw sound and free-spirited exploration of different styles, from country and blues to soul and gospel.

This week, Universal Records is releasing a remastered version of Exile on Main Street that includes a bonus disc of alternate versions of select songs, as well as previously unreleased tracks. The Rolling Stones brought on producer Don Was to scour the old Exile master recordings for lost gems. Some of the rediscovered songs needed mixing, while others needed entirely new lyrics and vocal tracks. On this edition of All Songs Considered, Was talks about how he picked the songs, how they were produced and the lasting impact of the now-legendary album.

Link to music tracks is below:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126832322&ps=rs#playlist

In the summer of 1971, guitarist Keith Richards worked up a riff to a song that we'll probably dance to forever.

"I loved the riff," Richards says. " 'Tumbling Dice' is very much like 'rolling stone.' It has the same connotations."

"Tumbling Dice" was one of the few hits on The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street. Released in 1972, the album was a fat collection of rock 'n' roll at its roughest and bluesiest. It was a little too raw for many critics and fans. Nearly four decades later, Exile is now a classic. On Tuesday, the album will be re-released with bonus tracks found in the band's archive.

But part of the story of Exile on Main Street was the band's actual exile in order to avoid tax problems in Britain. The band landed in the south of France and was soon in the midst of a veritable circus of traveling musicians, girlfriends, poets, drug dealers and miscellaneous hangers-on.

At the center of it all was Richards' villa and the basement where it began to make the music.

"Basically because we could not find a studio in the south of France that we felt that we could record in, so we kind of got there by default," Richards says. "We thought, 'Well, we'll just rehearse in my basement while we find a place to record.' After a couple of weeks, we just looked at each other and sort of gave up looking anywhere else. We got it here, you know?"

It was summertime when the band decided to stick it out in the basement, but the house was full of people.

"Really, all that was happening in the house was peripheral to us," Richards says. "I was writing songs in the afternoon and then recording them at night. We were trying to keep up with the pace of the band. Mick [Jagger] and I were frantically writing songs, so there wasn't much time for partying."

There was definitely some partying going on, but Richards and Jagger didn't have much to do with it.

"We'd be down there all night," Richards says. "We used to have a little [surface] to play cards on when we weren't recording. You start to become a troglodyte or something."

The basement itself was hot and dusty. Richards says he can still smell it.

"It's sort of indescribable," he says. "I'll leave it to your imagination."

But Exile on Main Street wasn't all grime and grit. Out of that basement also came "Happy."

"It was afternoon and I was trying to put some songs together for the evening. And suddenly I hit those opening chords," Richards says. "Jimmy Miller, the producer, was there, and Jimmy said, 'Let's just put that down on tape to remember it for later.' I did it in two takes with Bobby Keys playing baritone sax and Jimmy Miller played drums. It's the way you like them — songs that just crop up out of nowhere, and before the song goes down, it's in the can."

"Well, I never kept a dollar past sunset
It always burned a hole in my pants
Never made a school mama happy
Never blew a second chance."

"You can start off with one line, and you've got maybe two seconds to come up with another one. You're bypassing the thought process and you're just seeing what comes out," Richards says. "If it doesn't work, then you just rewrite. Other times, you wanna do these things on the knife edge — you really don't know what you're going to say next. It saves a lot of paper."

The "exile" began in 1971, when The Rolling Stones' members owed more taxes than they could pay in England, so they picked up and left the country. Of course, it was The Rolling Stones, so that meant quite a luxurious lifestyle. In the basement of a sprawling mansion in the south of France, the band recorded Exile on Main Street.

Upstairs, as legend has it, was a constant party.

"Decadent, degenerate behavior all around," Mick Jagger says. "The south of France is pretty much known for that. Still goes on."

But as Keith Richards said Monday, they didn't do too much partying themselves.

"People didn't come down to the basement much. I don't think people found the basement very interesting," Jagger says. "It was rather damp and unpleasant. It wasn't a peanut gallery kind of studio — there was nowhere to see from. There wasn't a control room with nice glass and lots of soft drinks. If people came down, they'd stay a couple minutes and go, 'Euh.' "

Jagger has been looking and listening back to the songs recorded during that chaotic summer. For the new re-release of Exile, The Rolling Stones went to the archive and searched through a trove of old tracks and outtakes. Some of the songs didn't even have lyrics, which allowed Jagger to fashion new songs out of 40-year-old tunes.

"When I started looking at this unreleased material, like 'Plundered My Soul,' I was quite impressed by how together the band was on something that was actually an outtake. An outtake is quite often about the stuff you haven't used," Jagger says. "It's very unfinished; it's a bit slovenly. Though it was a relatively undisciplined bunch of sessions, when we actually got into the sessions, I think the playing was quite disciplined."

In reworking this old material, Jagger had to write completely new lyrics for "Following the River." The words are quite reflexive and even a bit elegiac.

"It's what they call in the business a 'kiss-off song,' " Jagger says. "It's a regretful goodbye. It's not a nasty goodbye. It's saying goodbye and knowing you're going to miss her."

But Morning Edition host Renee Montagne wonders if these lyrics are four decades' worth of emotions, or if Jagger would have written them in 1971.

"I can only write from today," Jagger says. "Having said that, it's not that much different in tone from 'Angie' in a way, which is another kiss-off song. And until we started talking about this just now, I never thought of comparing them."

The Rolling Stones' members were avoiding tax problems in Britain, which is why they "exiled" to the south of France. But did they really feel like they were in exile?

"I think so, yeah. It was a bit of a wrench to give up our home lives in England," Jagger says. "At the time, it was a bit of a laugh for the first few months. After a while, you realize that from a comfortable English life, you've moved into a different kind of life. I mean, musicians of every stripe, they tend to be cosmopolitan kind of people. Perhaps musicians were the first cosmopolitan people. In the 18th century, they would move where the patronage was. In that way, it wasn't a satch of wrenches it might be for some other people."

But The Rolling Stones adjusted to life in France anyway. In the new liner notes to Exile on Main Street, guitarist Mick Taylor writes, "I'm not having any problem with the language here, because I don't speak French." Jagger then mentions what Bill Wyman says in the documentary — that the band was in the part of France where people went specifically for its food, yet he can't find his favorite tea bag.

In working on the reissue, Jagger spent half a year digging through that creative period of his life. Jagger writes in the liner notes that this album includes songs "you probably have second thoughts about," but was glad he did.

"Would I have changed Exile on Main Street if I could? I easily could have. This is a good opportunity," Jagger says, laughing. "No, I just wanted to add to it. I was asked by the record company if there was anything else of interest. I was trying to find things that stood up, and I think we managed to find things that did hold up, things that gave it extra depth. I was quite pleased with them.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126829155

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126887916

thanks Steve !