Mac Touch Gestures

Mac Multi-Touch Gestures

Multitouch gestures let you use several fingers to do cool stuff on Mac Laptops. Not all Macs can perform these gestures, so if it doesn’t work, your laptop may not be new enough to support the gestures.

Basic (Have been supported for quite some time. If they don’t work, you must enable them in System Preferences.)

Gesture	Action
2-Finger Drag Up/Down/Left/Right	Scroll Up/Down/Left/Right
2-Finger Click	Equivalent to a Right-Click or Ctrl-Click
Hold Control while 2-Finger Dragging Up/Down	Zoom In/Out on the Screen

The Multi-touch Gestures below are supported on newer laptops such as the MacBook Air as well as Unibody MacBook and MacBook Pros (and the previous generation of MacBook Pros). Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard adds 4 finger gestures to older Macs that previously had only supported the 3 finger gestures.

Finder & Quick Look

Gesture	Action
3-Finger Swipe Left/Right	Go Back/Forward in Folder History
Pinch/Expand In Cover Flow	Increase/Decrease Thumbnail Size
Pinch In Quick Look	Exit Fullscreen
Expand (Reverse Pinch) In Quick Look	Enter Fullscreen

Exposé and App Swicher (Work Everywhere)

Gesture	Action
4-Finger Swipe Up	Hide Windows and Show Desktop (Exposé)
4-Finger Swipe Down	Show All Windows (Exposé)
4-Finger Swipe Left/Right	Open Application Switcher (You can use a Trackpad or Mouse to select the desired app, or use a 2-Finger scroll to switch apps, with a 4-Finger Click to choose it.)

http://www.danrodney.com/mac/multitouch.html

Beating the Bidding System

Learning a few Priceline bidding tricks will help you get the best deal.

Getting the best deal when you bid on hotel rooms on Priceline can be tricky.

Once you've done your homework, decided how much to bid on the hotel rooms, and placed your bid, your offer may still be rejected. When that happens, you must wait three days (72 full hours) for another chance to place a free bid again for the same trip.

Or do you?

Many Priceline customers are taking advantage of a loophole in the system, casually known as "using non 4 star zones," to turn in a free re-bid immediately. It sounds complicated, but it's fairly simple -- and effective -- to re-bid on hotel rooms once you get the hang of it.

To understand free re-bidding, you have to first know a little about how bidding on Priceline works. After a bid you've placed has been rejected, Priceline allows you to bid on hotel rooms again, but only if you significantly change your bid. To qualify, you would have to add another zone (area of town), lower your quality requirements, or change the dates of your stay. Simply raising the amount of your bid doesn't qualify you for a free re-bid. Hotels on Priceline are rated by quality using a star system. Lowest quality hotels are 1 star, and highest quality (resorts) are 5 stars.

Herein lies the key to free re-bidding: not all zones have hotels in every quality category. What does that mean? Simple. Imagine you are looking for a 4-star hotel in the zone closest to the airport. Your bid on hotel rooms is rejected. You'd like to bid again with a slightly higher price for the same hotels, but Priceline won't allow that. So you locate a zone in the same city (perhaps across town) that does not have any 4-star hotels in it, raise your bid price, and try again. Adding a new zone to your bid qualifies you for the free re-bid Priceline offers. And, since the new zone you've chosen doesn't contain any 4-star hotels, you will not be stuck with a hotel in that zone.

It's important to remember when using this system to raise your bid price with the free re-bid. Otherwise, adding the new zone will do you no good; your new offer will be an exact duplicate of your previous offer, and will be rejected again.

So, how do you find out which zones have which star quality levels? It's easy -- in fact, Priceline will tell you. Start over as if you were creating a new bid. Once you get to the screen which lists all the zones in a particular city, choose one and select "Next." On the next page, you will be allowed to choose a star level from the levels listed. If the zone you've selected has 4- or 3-star hotels listed as a choice, use your browser's "Back" button to try again and select another zone. (For this trick to work, make sure you only select one zone at a time.)

Once you find a zone that has no 3- or 4-star hotels listed, you've found the "dummy" zone you can use. Start your re-bid and add this dummy zone to your offer. When using the free re-bid system, always double-check to make sure the dummy zone you're using does not contain any hotels in your star quality range -- even if you've bid in this city before.

Zones -- and the hotels included in them -- are subject to change daily, so you will want to confirm that your dummy zone is still empty of the star quality hotels you are requesting.

Questions? Having success bidding? Can't get an offer accepted? Post a message in our "Bidding for Travel" forum¹!

Update: A reader adds, "There is one important caveat that you did not mention (probably because you didn't know). When you are checking for 'no 4 star zones' you have to make sure that the zone you are checking doesn't have a little palm tree next to it. The palm tree indicates that there are resorts in that area. You may check the spot and see there are no four star hotels, but when you go to bid and include that new location, they may end up sticking you at a resort. I just got caught by this while booking a place in Vegas. I wanted a four star on the strip. I went back and forth a few times, including other locations. I ended up including 'Henderson' which showed no four stars, but my bid was accepted by a resort in the area, certainly not my intention. Not that it's a big deal in this case, it is a nice place and it's only 17 miles from the strip. But I could see some of your readers ending up getting stuck in a bad situation because of this little detail." Thanks for the tip!

By Charlyn Keating Chisholm, About.com Guide

http://hotels.about.com/cs/travelerstools/a/pricelinebid.htm?p=1

Microsoft Turns Off Privacy Features to Win Advertiser Revenue

After sharp internal debate, Microsoft designed Internet Explorer so that users must keep turning on privacy settings every time IE starts.

Microsoft chose "advertisers" over "privacy".

Product development people originally designed IE to have superior set of privacy tools. The benefit - keep your web browsing private and prevent tagging by "3rd party cookies" and "trackers".

However, wanting to profile buyer behavior, the Microsoft biz side won out, changing the browser to open the door to taggers for advertising.

Details here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703467304575383530439838568.html?mod=djemTECH_t

How to Control Your Privacy Online

To protect your computer from trackers, here's how to safeguard and control your privacy online, just click on the link below for important tips and how to's:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703977004575393173432219064.html#project%3DCOOKIESLIDE1007%26articleTabs%3Dinteractive

Look Who's Watching... You On Your Computer

Websites are now watching your clicking behavior and feeding back a personal profiles to a nascent data tracking industry. Click on graphic below to see how it works.

The largest U.S. websites are installing new and intrusive consumer-tracking technologies on the computers of people visiting their sites—in some cases, more than 100 tracking tools at a time—a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.

The tracking files represent the leading edge of a lightly regulated, emerging industry of data-gatherers who are in effect establishing a new business model for the Internet: one based on intensive surveillance of people to sell data about, and predictions of, their interests and activities, in real time.

The Journal's study shows the extent to which Web users are in effect exchanging personal data for the broad access to information and services that is a defining feature of the Internet.

In an effort to quantify the reach and sophistication of the tracking industry, the Journal examined the 50 most popular websites in the U.S. to measure the quantity and capabilities of the "cookies," "beacons" and other trackers installed on a visitor's computer by each site. Together, the 50 sites account for roughly 40% of U.S. page-views.

The 50 sites installed a total of 3,180 tracking files on a test computer used to conduct the study. Only one site, the encyclopedia Wikipedia.org, installed none. Twelve sites, including IAC/InterActive Corp.'s Dictionary.com, Comcast Corp.'s Comcast.net and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN.com, installed more than 100 tracking tools apiece in the course of the Journal's test.

The Journal also surveyed its own site, WSJ.com, which doesn't rank among the top 50 by visitors. WSJ.com installed 60 tracking files, slightly below the 64 average for the top 50 sites.

Some two-thirds of the tracking tools installed—2,224—came from 131 companies that, for the most part, are in the business of following Internet users to create rich databases of consumer profiles that can be sold. The companies that placed the most such tools were Google Inc., Microsoft. and Quantcast Corp., all of which are in the business of targeting ads at people online.

Google, Microsoft and Quantcast all said they don't track individuals by name and offer Internet users a way to remove themselves from their tracking networks. Comcast, MSN and Dictionary.com said they disclose tracking practices in their privacy policies, and said their visitors aren't identified by name.

The state of the art is growing increasingly intrusive, the Journal found. Some tracking files can record a person's keystrokes online and then transmit the text to a data-gathering company that analyzes it for content, tone and clues to a person's social connections. Other tracking files can re-spawn trackers that a person may have deleted.

To measure the sensitivity of the data gathered by tracking companies, the Journal created an "exposure index" for the top 50 sites. Dictionary.com ranked highest in exposing users to potentially aggressive surveillance: It installed 168 tracking tools that didn't let users decline to be tracked, and 121 tools that, according to their privacy statements, don't rule out collecting financial or health data. Dictionary.com attributed the number of tools to its use of many different ad networks, each of which puts tools on its site.

Some of the tracking files identified by the Journal were so detailed that they verged on being anonymous in name only. They enabled data-gathering companies to build personal profiles that could include age, gender, race, zip code, income, marital status and health concerns, along with recent purchases and favorite TV shows and movies.

The ad industry says tracking doesn't violate anyone's privacy because the data sold doesn't identify people by name, and the tracking activity is disclosed in privacy policies. And while many companies are involved in collecting, analyzing and selling the data, they provide a useful service by raising the chance Internet users see ads and information relevant to them personally.

"We are delivering free content to consumers," says Mike Zaneis, vice president of public policy for the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade group of advertisers and publishers. "Sometimes it means that we get involved in a very complex ecosystem with lots of third parties."

The growing use and power of tracking technology have begun to raise regulatory concerns. Congress is considering laws to limit tracking. The Federal Trade Commission is developing privacy guidelines for the industry.

If "you were in the Gap, and the sales associate said to you, 'OK, from now on, since you shopped here today, we are going to follow you around the mall and view your consumer transactions,' no person would ever agree to that," Sen. George LeMieux, R-Florida, said this week in a Senate hearing on Internet privacy.

Here are steps you can take to protect your computer

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703977004575393173432219064.html#project%3DCOOKIESLIDE1007%26articleTabs%3Dinteractive

Key tracking terminology

Ad exchange -- An auction-based marketplace where advertisers can bid to place ads in the space offered by websites.

Ad network -- A company that sells ads on behalf of website publishers.

Aggregated information -- Data combined from many individual users that can't identify anyone personally.

Anonymous information -- Facts about you that don't identify you personally, such as age group and gender.

Beacons -- Invisible software on many websites (also known as "bugs" or "pixels") that can track web surfers' location and activities online. Some are powerful enough to know what a user types on a particular site.

Behavioral targeting -- Advertisers and websites use information about where you browse and what you search for online to guess your interests and decide what ads to show you. It's also called interest-based advertising or customized ads.

Cookie -- Tiny text file put on your PC by websites or marketing firms that—depending on its purpose—might be used simply to remember your preferences for one site, or to track you across many sites.

Data exchange -- A marketplace where advertisers bid for access to data about customers. Marketers then use this data to target ads. For example: A Denver hotel might bid to reach people known to have researched Denver hotels recently.

Exposure index -- The Journal's analysis of how exposed your data is when you visit a website that has trackers. Each tracker was given a score based on how the tracking company collects, shares, and uses your data. A website's exposure index was calculated using the sum of the scores of all of the trackers we found on that site.

First-party tracking file -- Typically a cookie installed on your computer by a website for benign purposes such as keeping you logged in to that one site.

Flash cookie -- Small file put on your computer by Adobe's Flash software, which is used by many sites to display video or ads. Flash cookies can be designed to re-install regular cookies that were previously deleted.

Internet Protocol (IP) address -- A unique number assigned to every computer connected to the internet. Any website you visit can know your IP address, and through that can often know your general location.

Offline data -- Information about you that comes from sources other than the Internet. It could include your zip code, estimated household income, the cars you own, or the purchases you've made in a store.

Personally identifiable information -- Data identifying you uniquely, such as your name, Social Security number, address or credit-card information.

Privacy policy -- A notice on a website that discloses some or all the ways the site collects or uses information.

Third-party tracking file -- A cookie, beacon or other tracking technology installed on your computer by an ad network or research firm that can track your activities across many websites.

Tracking company -- Companies that use cookies and other tracking technology to collect online data about you.

User profile -- Information about your actions, interests and characteristics that tracking companies compile about you.

HTC Droid Incredible Teardown Cost = $163.35

The Droid Incredible from HTC Corp. carries a bill of materials (BOM) of $163.35, based on a dissection conducted by the iSuppli Corp. Teardown Analysis Service (see the figure).

In fact, the research company noted that the smart phone is very similar to the HTC Nexus One in terms of costs and features. The main difference is the Incredible's support for the CDMA air standard used by Verizon in the United States.

Both phones use an advanced active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) display. They also share a common electronic design based on Qualcomm's 1-GHz Snapdragon baseband processor. And, they integrate a class-leading density of 4 Gbits of mobile double-data-rate (DDR) DRAM to support the processor. The Nexus One's BOM is just a little higher at $174.15, based on iSuppli's January pricing estimate.

Beyond the use of CDMA in the Incredible, only a few other differences distinguish the devices. For example, the Incredible employs HTC's Sense user interface (UI) overlay, while the Nexus uses the generic Android UI. Add the Incredible's $8.90 manufacturing cost, its combined BOM and production expense totals $172.25.

The most expensive section of the Incredible is the baseband/applications processor, which costs $31.40 and accounts for 19.2% of the phone's total BOM. Qualcomm'

s baseband IC, which includes the Snapdragon processor, dominates this section. The display and touchscreen second comes in second at $31.20 or 19.1% of the BOM. Samsung Mobile Display supplies the AMOLED display portion of this subsystem.

The memory section ranks third at $29.80 and 18.2%. In the unit that iSuppli dissected, the section comprised NAND flash memory and mobile DDR DRAM from Samsung Electronics as well as more from Hynix Semiconductor. Yet iSuppli believes that HTC is likely using additional sources of supply for these commodity memory parts.

At $8.45 or 5.2%, the Bluetooth/wireless local-area networking (WLAN) section features a Broadcom chip that combines Bluetooth, FM, and WLAN support. The power-management section, at $7.25 and 4.4%, includes semiconductors from Qualcomm and Texas Instruments.

At $5.55 and 3.4%, the user interface functions feature an Atmel touchscreen controller, an Asahi Kasei Microdevices electronic compass, and a Bosch Sensortec GMBH accelerometer. With $5 and 3.1%, the RF transceiver section centers on a single-chip RF device from Qualcomm. The power amplifier section, at $2.60 and 1.6%, features two transmit modules from Avago Technologies and TriQuint Semiconductor.

Story

http://mobiledevdesign.com/hardware_news/htc-droid-incredible-carriers-bom-073010/

Image

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703578104575397661897693940.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEADTop

$5 Million, 300 Foot Long Set Built for HBO "Boardwalk Empire"

For its new gangster series "Boardwalk Empire," HBO built a $5 million, 300-foot-long boardwalk on the Brooklyn waterfront to recreate Atlantic City circa 1920.

The set required 150 tons of steel and includes historical elements like the Baby Incubator, an actual nursery where tourists could gawk at tiny, premature infants.

The 12 episodes produced for Season 1 employed more than 300 crew members, 225 actors in speaking roles and 1,000 extras. It took about 200 days to shoot, twice what a standard network drama would take.

Trailers here:

http://www.slashfilm.com/2010/07/26/martin-scorseses-hbo-series-boardwalk-empire-trailer-4-countdown-to-prohibition/

http://www.obsessedwithfilm.com/tv-news/trailer-hbos-boardwalk-empire.php

Details here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704684604575381030727161888.html?KEYWORDS=HBO+Boardwalk

Digital Camera Shopping Guide

Late summer is a good time to shop for digital camera bargains.

Prices drop after June graduation and Father's Day.

Clearance sales run until November holidays start.

Here's a helpful features guide:

http://www.notesonphotography.com/guides/point-and-shoot-camera-shopping-guide

Digital Camera - Shutter Speed

Here's a handy comparison of shutter speeds for various digital cameras and types, see link below.

Shutter speed for digital cameras is often overlooked as a key specification.

Shutter speed can also get buried in camera specs.

http://www.cameras.co.uk/html/shutter-lag-comparisons.cfm?sort=Category

Note: some of these are Euro models, look for U.S. equivalents.

Move XP installation into Windows 7

Here's a software program called Zinstall XP7 that's designed to move your Win XP into Win 7



http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/window-on-windows/?p=2770

Antenna Gate

Apple CEO Steve Jobs said Friday "we are not perfect" during a presentation at the company's Cupertino, Calif. headquarters.

He announced customers that buy an iPhone 4 through Sept. 30 will get a free protective cover, or bumper. Anyone who has already purchased a bumper will get a refund. AT&T Inc. subscribers who want to return the device can get a full refund and get out of their contracts without penalties.

Apple "screwed up" with the signal algorithm of the phone, Chief Executive Steve Jobs said during a press conference on Friday, which he kicked off by saying "we're not perfect." But he stuck to the company line regarding the antenna problems being common with all smartphones, adding the issue was blown out of proportion, and that there was no "antennagate."

"To customers that are having problems, I apologize to them," Mr. Jobs said. Mr. Jobs said the company has sold more than 3 million iPhones since it went on sale in June 24, and defended it as the "perhaps the best product made by Apple."

He acknowledged that the iPhone 4 loses signal strength when touched in the lower left corner, but argued the problem is not unique to his company's device. He went on to show videos of other smartphones, including the BlackBerry Bold and HTC Droid Eris, that appeared to lose reception when gripped in certain ways.

"This is life in the smartphone world," he said. He said 1.7% of customers have returned their iPhone 4 to AT&T, a lower rate than the predecessor, the iPhone 3GS.

The iPhone 4, which has an unusual antenna design, was immediately dogged by complaints about its reception, particularly when owners held the device in a particular way. The problems cascaded into a full-blown public relations challenge for Apple, which initially told owners to hold the phone differently and then blamed the reception difficulties on software.

The company's problems worsened when influential product review publication Consumer Reports said Monday it could not recommend the phone. "We were stunned and embarassed" by the Consumer Reports conclusion, Mr. Jobs said.

Consumer Reports determined that touching the iPhone's antenna, which wraps around the sides of the device, degrades the device's signal. It later recommended sheathing the iPhone in a case that covers the sensitive lower left section remedies the situation.

The bumpers currently sell for $29 on its website. The product is sold out; the website says it will ship in five to seven business days.

Many industry observers have called the bumper giveaway as the most likely--and least costly--solution to Apple's problems. UBS analyst Maynard Um estimated that the bumpers cost $3 each, and freely distributing them would cut into its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings by 2 cents a share.

Despite the issues, Mr. Jobs called the antenna design the "most advanced" ever on a smartphone. He said the rate of dropped calls for the iPhone 4 is only slightly more than on the previous version, the iPhone 3GS.

from WSJ.com

Clues About What Foods Help Us

God left us great clues about what foods help what part of our body!

A sliced Carrot looks like the human eye. The pupil, iris and radiating lines look just like the human eye... And YES, science now shows carrots greatly enhance blood flow to and function of the eyes.

A Tomato has four chambers and is red. The heart has four chambers and is red. All of the research shows tomatoes are loaded with lycopine and are indeed pure heart and blood food.

Grapes hang in a cluster that has the shape of the heart. Each grape looks like a blood cell and all of the research today shows grapes are also profound heart and blood vitalizing food.

A Walnut looks like a little brain, a left and right hemisphere, upper cerebrums and lower cerebellums. Even the wrinkles or folds on the nut are just like the neo-cortex. We now know walnuts help develop more than three (3) dozen neuron-transmitters for brain function.

Kidney Beans actually heal and help maintain kidney function and yes, they look exactly like the human kidneys.

Celery, Bok Choy, Rhubarb and many more look just like bones. These foods specifically target bone strength. Bones are 23% sodium and these foods are 23% sodium. If you don't have enough sodium in your diet, the body pulls it from the bones, thus making them weak. These foods replenish the skeletal needs of the body.

Avocados, Eggplant and Pears target the health and function of the womb and cervix of the female - they look just like these organs.

Today's research shows that when a woman eats one avocado a week, it balances hormones, sheds unwanted birth weight, and prevents cervical cancers. And how profound is this? It takes exactly nine (9) months to grow an avocado from blossom to ripened fruit. There are over 14,000 photolytic chemical constituents of nutrition in each one of these foods (modern science has only studied and named about 141 of them).

Figs are full of seeds and hang in twos when they grow. Figs increase the mobility of male sperm and increase the numbers of Sperm as well to overcome male sterility.

Sweet Potatoes look like the pancreas and actually balance the glycemic index of diabetics.

Olives assist the health and function of the ovaries

Oranges, Grapefruits, and other Citrus fruits look just like the mammary glands of the female and actually assist the health of the breasts and the movement of lymph in and out of the breasts.

Onions look like the body's cells. Today's research shows onions help clear waste materials from all of the body cells. They even produce tears which wash the epithelial layers of the eyes. A working companion, Garlic, also helps eliminate waste materials and dangerous free radicals from the body.

thanks Rabea !

Ringo Turns 70

‘I’m not hiding from it", Ringo Starr says about turning 70 on Wednesday, July 7th.

Ever since Ringo Starr sang a well-known cover of Buck Owens’s hit “Act Naturally,” that he’d become “the biggest fool to ever hit the big time,” the renowned rock ’n’ roll drummer has done all right for himself.

As a member of the Beatles and as a solo artist, Mr. Starr has sold more than a few records, won some Grammy Awards and even had a minor planet named for him. As you’d expect, he plans to mark the occasion with a little help from his friends, and anyone else he can round up.

Finding himself in New York on the big day, he is celebrating with a private event in the morning at the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square; Hard Rock International is honoring the day at locations around the world. Details are at ringostarr.com.

In the evening he will perform a concert at Radio City Music Hall with his All Starr Band, which includes Edgar Winter, Gary Wright and Rick Derringer.

Mr. Starr spoke recently with Dave Itzkoff about hitting the big seven-O and some other recent accomplishments. Here are excerpts from the conversation.

Q. Can I wish you a happy birthday ahead of schedule?
A. You can. And you can put the gift in the post or you can leave it at the concierge.

Q. What would you like to get this year?
A. You know what I’m asking for: peace and love.

Q. How are you feeling about the number 70?
A. As far as I’m concerned, in my head, I’m 24. That’s just how it is. The number, yeah, it’s high. But I just felt I’ve got to celebrate it. I’m on my feet and I’m doing what I love to do, and I’m in a profession, as a musician, where we can go on for as long as we can go on. I’m not hiding from it, you know.

Q. When you were 24 what did you think you’d be doing at age 70?
A. I don’t know, but when I was 22, actually, I remember this so well, and I was playing, and there was another band, and these people in that other band were 40, and I was saying, “My God, you’re still doing it?” [laughs] Which doesn’t look funny in black and white, but it was incredible, and now I’m waaaaay past 40. My new hero is B. B. King. I have a great line: B. B. is still playing, even though he is sitting down now. But hey, I’m sitting down already. You’ve just got to get on with it. I’d like to be out there pretending I’m only 55, but I’m not.

Q. What seems like an advanced age to you now?
A. I think 90. But we’ll see. It’s a birthday at a time.

Q. You’ve had a few interesting things happen to you over the last year. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is taking one of your drums.
A. They’re taking a whole snare drum. I’m lending it to them because, it’s well-documented, in 1964 that old Bill Ludwig, he presented it to me. I bought these Ludwig drums, and in the shop in England, the guy wanted to take the sign out, but I love everything American, the music and the instruments. So I made him leave the sign on. So I was a running commercial — on Sullivan, and all that touring of America, it said Ludwig drums. And so to thank me for that, they gave me this gold drum, and that’s the one that’s going into the Metropolitan for a year.

Q. How does that make you feel, to have one of your possessions on display at the Met?
A. Well, yeah, cool.

Q. That’s it?
A. I mean it. I’ve had a couple of pieces of clothing in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Q. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame isn’t too shabby, but come on, this is the Met. A. It’s cool. That’s all I can say. It’s very cool. I did a show there in January with Ben Harper, that’s how we got friendly with them, and they have an instrument room with a lot of very crazed African drums, old pianos, and so they thought this would be good.

Q. Are they letting you borrow anything from their collection in exchange?
A. Yeah, they’re giving me Tutankhamen’s tomb. No, they’re not giving me anything. I’m being kind to them.

Q. A few weeks ago the Vatican finally gave its approval to the Beatles. How did you feel about that?
A. It didn’t affect me in any way, but I do believe that the Vatican have better things to deal with than forgiving the Beatles. I don’t remember what it actually said — it had some weird piece in it, too. That they’ve forgiven us for being, what, satanic? Whoever wrote it was thinking about the Stones.

Q. Are you ever surprised by the unpredictable ways in which the Beatles continue to resonate in the popular culture? There’s a novel out now called “Paul Is Undead,” which imagines that you’re a ninja and your band mates are zombies.
A. I only ever see the covers and the titles. I don’t read it all. But it’s always on. There’s nothing we can do about that. What’s more interesting to me is that our records are still coming out. And they’re the same records and the new generation gets to hear them, and as far as that’s concerned, that’s the most important thing to me. The music we make, it’s still going on.

Q. Do you get much chance to listen to all the Beatles covers that continue be produced?
A. You have to talk to Sony about that. They have the publishing and they’ll give it to anyone.

Q. You’re using the occasion of your birthday to give a message back to your fans. A. Yes, I want to spread the word that at noon, wherever you are — in New York, in L.A., in Paris, in London — I just pray that you’ll put your fingers up and say, “Peace and love.” I did it two years ago, it was the first time, and I did it out of Chicago because I was on tour. This year, we’re playing Radio City, so we’re doing it in New York. In Japan there were little get-togethers and it went worldwide, so that was great.

Q. Do you think we’ve got a good chance at getting peace and love this year?
A. I think the more we promote it, the more chance we have of getting it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/arts/music/06ringo.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

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