Purple tomatoes: The richness of antioxidants against tumors

Found on Physorg on Saturday, 25 October 2008
Browse Science

"At a closer chemical analysis it comes out that our purple tomato has a very high antioxidant activity, almost tripled in comparison to the natural fruit thus it is very useful to study the effect of anthocyanins".

"But mice fed with purple tomatoes showed a significant increase of lifespan". The last group has reported an average lifespan of 182 days in comparison to the 142 recorded for mice fed standard diet.

Tomatoes are good for more than just ketchup. Besides salad, they also make a nice relish, chutney and jam.

Australia trials national net filters

Found on BBC News on Friday, 24 October 2008
Browse Censorship

ISP filtering is the blocking of certain sites which the government deems illegal or inappropriate, and is the central plank of the Rudd government's "Plan for Cyber-Safety".

The aim, he said, was to create a safer online environment for Australian children.

Senator Conroy has since indicated that there would be a two-tier system: a mandatory one that would block all "illegal material" and an optional tier that would block material deemed unsuitable for children, such as pornography.

Seems like they are really pushing it. There is no end to human stupidity.

Man sued for libel over comments on eBay

Found on Daily Telegraph on Thursday, 23 October 2008
Browse Legal-Issues

"I was told the phone was in good condition, but there were scratches all over it, a big chip out of the side and it was a different phone. I paid for a Samsung F700 and got a Samsung F700V," Mr Read said.

Mr Read, 42, a mechanic from Herne Bay, Kent, posted his feedback, saying: "Item was scratched, chipped and not the model advertised on Mr Jones's eBay account."

Soon after the email exchange, Mr Read received a pre-court letter from Mr Jones, demanding that he agree the comments were unreasonable.

He did send the wrong phone and it was chipped and scratched; so that are the facts. Granted Read could have also mentioned that he got a full refund, but oh well. Just pay more attention to what you are mailing out next time.

Alleged Hackers Charged With Highway Robbery, Literally

Found on Wired on Wednesday, 22 October 2008
Browse Pranks

For over three years the Russian immigrants repeatedly hacked a Department of Transportation website called Safersys.org.

There, the pair would temporarily change the contact information for a legitimate trucking company to an address and phone number under their control.

But instead of transporting the load, Lakes and Berkovich would outsource the job to another trucking company, the feds say, posing as the legitimate company whose identity they'd hijacked. Once the cargo was delivered, the men allegedly invoiced their customer and pocketed the funds.

Now that's a creative business model. It's pretty surprising though that this worked for three years and nobody noticed. That gives the safersys.org domain name quite a funny taste.

Afghan student gets 20 years instead of death for blasphemy

Found on LA Times on Tuesday, 21 October 2008
Browse Censorship

The student, Parwez Kambakhsh, 24, ran afoul of Afghan authorities last year when he circulated an article about women's rights under Islam after downloading it from the Internet.

International organizations, including New York-based Human Rights Watch, said the case pointed to a troubling lack of respect for freedom of speech and individual liberties in Afghanistan, nearly seven years after a U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban fundamentalist Islamic movement.

Seven years, and nothing changed.

Woman, 89, arrested for refusing to return ball

Found on Ananova on Monday, 20 October 2008
Browse Pranks

An 89-year-old woman has been arrested in the US for refusing to give back a ball a child had kicked into her garden.

The boy's mother, Kelly Tanis, said Mrs Jester had taken balls from her five children before, so she called the police.

"This time it was a ball that my son had just bought with his own money. He works and he makes his own money, and he bought that ball, and six days later she took it."

Well, that boy better learns early that life isn't all sweet and dandy. And since this wasn't the first time it happened, I'm tempted to say that Kelly's kids have at least some sort of reputation in the neighbourhood.

Big Brother is listening (and grabbing): Sony's new PS3 ToS

Found on Ars Technica on Sunday, 19 October 2008
Browse Various

"SCEA reserves the right to monitor and record any online activity and communication throughout PSN and you give SCEA your express consent to monitor and record your activities," the agreement reads. "Any data collected in this way, including the content of your communications, the time and location of your activities, your Online ID and IP address and other related information may be used by us to enforce this Agreement or protect the interests of SCEA, its users, or licensors."

"SCEA is not responsible for providing you with replacement copies for any reason."

"To the extent permitted by law, You authorize and license SCEA a royalty free and perpetual right to use, distribute, copy, modify, display, and publish your User Material for any reason without any restrictions or payments to you or any third parties," Sony explains.

Sweet, no?

Passports will be needed to buy mobile phones

Found on Times Online on Saturday, 18 October 2008
Browse Various

Everyone who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under government plans to extend massively the powers of state surveillance.

Whitehall officials have raised the idea of a register containing the names and addresses of everyone who buys a phone in recent talks with Vodafone and other telephone companies, insiders say.

As The Sunday Times revealed earlier this month, GCHQ has already been provided with up to £1 billion to work on the pilot stage of the Big Brother database, which will see thousands of "black boxes" installed on communications lines provided by Vodafone and BT as part of a pilot interception programme.

Welcome to Orwellian Kingdom.

Palin demands $15m to search her own emails

Found on The Register on Friday, 17 October 2008
Browse Politics

The office of the Alaska governor, which by state law is required to make such messages public, says it could cost more than $15m for anyone conducting an exhaustive search. (...) requests won't be honored until November 17, two weeks after the presidential election is held.

Critics say her use of the Yahoo account could violate Alaska open records laws that require official communications to be available to members of the public.

State bean counters say it will cost $960.31 to search each employee's account. If email for all 16,000 employees are processed, the exact figure is $15,364,000.96. They figure it will take 13 hours per email account. That figure doesn't include the cost of the paper. The office will only make the email available in hard copy.

This is too ridiculous to be a hoax. Nobody searches an email account for 13 hours; you just dump all mails into one box and run queries. Or just release everything; after all, it's official and citizens have the right to see it if they want. In my opinion, Palin has lost her right to do any official business at all with such an attitude; and she has something to hide too.

Google Apps Outages Officially a Part of Our Lives

Found on eWEEK on Thursday, 16 October 2008
Browse Internet

Google's Gmail suffers an outage, while the search engine's Start Page suffers a bug, disconnecting users from their content. The blips cast another pall over SAAS, cloud computing and Web services at large.

Indeed, some Google Apps users scoff outright at others who put mission-critical business operations in the hands of SAAS from Google.

If someone uses Gmail for all business mail, then he's in no position to make any demands. He put the fate of his company into the hands of a free email service (and one from Google even). It's not like Google is "the Internet" and magically keeps everything up and running.