Category: Interesting Reads

Today in history – Know-Nothing party meet in Philly to nominate Pres. candidate

The headline covers almost everything that matters: this date in 1856 saw a convening in Philadelphia by the Know-Nothing political party to nominate its first presidential candidate.

The Know-Nothing movement began in the 1840s, when an increasing rate of immigration led to the formation of a number of so-called nativist societies to combat “foreign” influences in American society. Roman Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Italy, who were embraced by the Democratic Party in eastern cities, were especially targeted. In the early 1850s, several secret nativist societies were formed, of which the “Order of the Star-Spangled Banner” and the “Order of United Americans” were the most significant. When members of these organizations were questioned by the press about their political platform, they would often reply they knew nothing, hence the popular name for the Know-Nothing movement.

When their candidate, former President Fillmore, failed to win anywhere except Maryland, the party effectively ceased to exist. Although the name might lead you to think they merely changed their name to the Democrats, they really did go away (which I know some of you wish would happen to the Democrats).

[tags]Today in History, The Know-Nothing party[/tags]

Oooops. Crap. Now we might have a cancer cure

A serendipitous moment that was almost missed by the discoverer.

Her carefully cultured cells were dead and Katherine Schaefer was annoyed, but just a few minutes later, the researcher realized she had stumbled onto a potential new cancer treatment.

. . .

Schaefer was looking for drugs to treat the inflammation seen in Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, both of which cause pain and diarrhea.

She was testing a compound called a PPAR-gamma modulator. It would never normally have been thought of as a cancer drug, or in fact a drug of any kind.

“I made a calculation error and used a lot more than I should have. And my cells died,” Schaefer said.

A colleague overheard her complaining. “The co-author on my paper said,’ Did I hear you say you killed some cancer?’ I said ‘Oh’, and took a closer look.”

They ran several tests and found the compound killed ”pretty much every epithelial tumor cell lines we have seen,” Schaefer said. Epithelial cells line organs such as the colon, and also make up skin.

It also killed colon tumors in mice without making the mice sick, they reported in the journal International Cancer Research.

So, let’s see what further research and testing bring out of this.  The article makes it sound like something similar already exists and has limited success, but perhaps further research can make something good happen with this.  Since my father died from cancer, anything that decreases cancer lethality interests me. (via /.)

[tags]Potential cancer treatment found via serendipity[/tags]

Why the Iraq war hurts the Republican party

A recent Op Ed piece in the Baltimore Sun has what I think is some very good insight into how the war in Iraq is hurting the Republican party. The author shows how much of the handling of the war is contrary to the expected values of the party.

According to the latest Gallup survey, Republican self-identification has declined nationally and in almost every American state. Why? The short answer is that President Bush’s war of choice in Iraq has destroyed the partisan brand Republicans spent the past four decades building.

That brand was based upon four pillars: that Republicans are more trustworthy on defense and military issues; that they know when and where markets can replace or improve government; that they are more competent administrators of those functions government can’t privatize; and, finally, that their public philosophy is imbued with moral authority. The war demolished all four claims.

He goes on to explain how the current situation shows the Republican party is viewed as performing opposite those typically held pillars.

[tags]How the Iraq war is breaking the Republican party[/tags]

Today in history 2007-02-14: St. Valentine’s day massacre

In what is sure to be viewed as an amazing coincidence by many of the less bright people in the world, we recognize today the St. Valentine’s day massacre of 1929, which oddly enough happened on St. Valentine’s day.

In Chicago, gunmen in the suspected employment of organized-crime boss Al Capone murder seven members of the George “Bugs” Moran North Siders gang in a garage on North Clark Street. The so-called St. Valentine’s Day Massacre stirred a media storm centered on Capone and his illegal Prohibition-era activities and motivated federal authorities to redouble their efforts to find evidence incriminating enough to take him off the streets.

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Next-gen video discs fully cracked

Not long ago, there was news of a successful crack of Blu-Ray and Hi-def DVD copy protection, but it wasn’t a general crack.  The crack relied on a weakness in extracting decryption information from discs, but it was a non-trivial effort.  The new method builds on that to successfully break any AACS protected disc.

As I can understand some of you are interested in how I retrieved the Media and Processing Keys. I will tell what i did.

Most of the time I spend studying the AACS papers. A good understanding of how things worked have helped me greatly in knowing what to find in the first place (and how to recognize something). I may write an explanation of (my understanding) of how AACS works in particular the subset-difference technique (which is by far the hardest to understand) at a later date if you guys want to.

But anyway. Since the moment I found the Volume ID (which was much simpler than I had thought) my thought was to try to find the Media Key. But after some discussion I thought it might be better to go directly for the Device Keys (bad mistake). After looking at files created and changed by software player and trying to recognize Device Keys in memory dumps I was starting to get worried a bit. I wasn’t making any progress.

So I went back to my original idea: do a bottom-up approach. So first I tried to find the Media Key. One of the logical things to do even before that was to search for the Verify Media Key Record in memory. But it wasn’t there. I then started to work on a little proggy that would scan a memdump and see everything as a Media Key: thus trying to verify it with the Verify Media Key Record. No luck.

This was frustrating: all kinds of information was in the memdump but not the Media Key (I sort of assumed/hoped it would). I made several memdumps at different moments but nada, nothing. After throwing it all away I remembered I still had a “corrupt” memdump from WinHex (it failed to finish it because WinHex said the memory had changed). It was really small compared to the others so I didn’t have much hope. But when running it with my proggy: voila! I found it. Which finally gave me hope I was going in the right direction.

There were just two major problems left: how do you detect the Processing Key and if its not in memory how do you find it at all? Well since I now knew how things worked I knew the Processing Key had to be combined with a C-value to produce the Media Key.

OK, I don’t get any of that.  But clearly others do, so I share this for their benefit.  (via boingboing)

[tags]AACS copy protection broken, Next-gen video disc format protections broken[/tags]

Kodak looks to churn up the inkjet printer market with substantially reduced ink prices

Assuming the printers perform as well as Kodak says, this new printer product line from Kodak should drop prices significantly from what current consumer printers offer.

Eastman Kodak Company (NYSE: EK) today entered the consumer inkjet industry with a revolutionary new product line for the home.

KODAK EASYSHARE All-in-One Printers will enable consumers to affordably print crisp, sharp documents and KODAK lab-quality photos at home using premium, pigment-based inks that will save consumers up to 50 percent on everything they print. The three new printers provide ultimate levels of print quality and ease-of-use, while offering low total cost of ownership compared to other leading consumer inkjet printers on the market.

. . .

The KODAK EASYSHARE AiO Printers use Kodak’s premium, pigment-based ink, priced at $9.99 for a cartridge of black ink and $14.99 for a five-ink color cartridge (US MSRP). For every $15 spent on color ink and $10 spent on black ink, consumers can print the same number of pages at half the cost of other consumer inkjet printers.When the KODAK Photo Value Pack is purchased, a 4 x 6-inch photo costs as little as 10 cents per print.

So all that remains is real world testing and reviews to see if the print quality stands up as well as consumables testing to verify similar printable pages/photos per cartridge as compared with competitors. If this is as good as Kodak says, I’m sure HP, Epson, and others will not be happy about legitimate price competition. Fuck ’em, I say. Competition is good for us, and I’m tired of paying $35 for a single color ink cartridge.

[tags]Kodak looking to shake up consumer inkjet market, New printer line from Kodak with low-price ($10) cartridges[/tags]

Rock on with the action games – they make your vision better

I don’t play the action games like I used to. The original Quake (I so pwned with the off-hand grappling hook mod) and Unreal Tournament (still the best of the bunch, although UT2004 is awesome) were my favorites. By my slowing reaction time (as a 36 year old gamer, I’m ancient by twitch-game standards) and frequent hand tremors leave me unable to compete against most of the folks that play shooters. However, if I could/did still play them, I would apparently benefit from improved visual acuity after playing (bonus shortened URL available as well).

Video games that contain high levels of action, such as Unreal Tournament, can actually improve your vision.

Researchers at the University of Rochester have shown that people who played action video games for a few hours a day over the course of a month improved by about 20 percent in their ability to identify letters presented in clutter–a visual acuity test similar to ones used in regular ophthalmology clinics.

In essence, playing video game improves your bottom line on a standard eye chart.

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Gaming’s most important multi-player games

Gamasutra polled people in the gaming industry what the most important multi-player games of all time are.  I was all ready to protest the article before I even read it, because one of my favorite games was sure to be missing, I thought.  Well, looks like my personal number one game for the list made it:

tribes-screenshot.jpgDynamix created the template for both team-based gameplay and “kit selection” that have been iterated on by every multiplayer-focused FPS since its release way back in 1998. Despite having a steep learning curve that scared off more than a few potential players, Tribes still managed to find a strong following that progressed the game to an ultra-competitive artform of teamplay.

Tribes‘ focus on playing as a team, filling roles, seperating offensive and defensive units, supporting flag carriers, etc, etc. pushed the future of FPS multiplayer gaming from pure deathmatch/”cowboy” gaming to one where squad play and team focus is just as important as “point and click” kills. Tribes represents a significant quantum leap in FPS multiplayer gaming…and sucked away five years of my life!

I played that game for 3 years before moving on to my current game of choice (City of Heroes).  And I kicked all kinds of ass on the map pictured above.  The other two games I felt HAD to make the list, Bomberman and Quake, did make the list.  I could go on for a long time about the multi-player games I played the most, but this short article highlights very well some of the most important.  I might consider Unreal Tournament for the list, as well, but I realize that some games have to get left off in the interest of brevity (not one of my strong points, admittedly).

Also missing is any mention of Massively Multiplayer gaming, of which perhaps Ultima Online and World of Warcraft are most important.  Yes, there were other MMOs before Ultima Online, and there have certainly been more successful ones than UO, but it made MMOs acceptable to many.  And there is no questioning the importance of the 1200 ton beast that is World of Warcraft.  It’s Ginormous.  I think at least one of these should be on the list.

[tags]The most important multi-player games of all times

Government approves new mileage ratings standard

This article at Consumer Reports caught my eye, as it says that the Environmental Protection Agency has updated its fuel-economy tests to better reflect modern driving habits. This change is the first real change since the fuel-economy tests were set in the 1970s. The outdated standard is the reason almost all drivers get lower actual mileage results than the advertised efficiency rating on cars.

fueleconomypage-thumb.jpg

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently proposed to change the way it estimates the fuel economy published on vehicle window stickers in order to make the estimates more consistent with real-world driving. The new proposal would reduce the city mileage estimates for most vehicles, starting in the 2008 model year, by 10 to 20 percent. Highway mileage estimates would drop 5 to 15 percent.

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Amazing news on the cancer research front

If you spend a lot of the time reading news on the web, keep up with the newspaper, or watch the news regularly on television, you have probably already heard some about the potential new cancer treatment via dichloroacetate (DCA). DCA is a long used compound previously known for combating mitochondrial diseases. It also is known to have very few and mild side-effects. This could be huge in treating cancer.

dichloroacetate.jpgDr. Evangelos Michelakis, a professor at the U of A Department of Medicine, has shown that dichloroacetate (DCA) causes regression in several cancers, including lung, breast and brain tumors.

Michelakis and his colleagues, including post-doctoral fellow Dr. Sebastian Bonnet, have published the results of their research in the journal Cancer Cell.

DCA functions by normalizing the behavior of mitochondria. Cancer has been known to alter the effects of mitochondria, and the belief has long been that this damage was permanent. The testing Dr. Michelakis has done shows that at least for some cancers, this is not true.


Continue reading “Amazing news on the cancer research front”

A comparison of online photo editing sites

If you have tons of photos and are looking for a way to work with them and edit your images, there are a number of good online services. Since the annoyance of uploading images, editing them, and downloading them again is pretty high, TechCrunch takes time to point out some that have sufficient value to justify the extra legwork.

Most of these online services also offer editing tools that go beyond simple rotation, resizing and cropping and start to creep into Photoshop territory. Here’s a few of the better ones, along with our most recent testing notes:

Highlighted are Fauxto, Picnik, Picture2Life, Preloadr (by the way, what the hell is up with the Web 2.0 hang-up on dropping the ‘e’ from site names?), PXN8, and Snipshot.

[tags]TechCrunch’s profile of online photo editing sites[/tags]

Border agents shoot Mexican drug runner, face jail time – but should they?

This news is a few weeks old, but I’ve been so busy with some other projects that I’m behind in a lot of postings that I’d like to get out. As the healine indicates, the basic bit of this story is that two border patrol agents shot Osvaldo Aldrete Davila, a Mexican drug runner, in the back, and are now serving time for violating Davila’s civil rights. There is apparently quite a bit of grassroots support for freeing the agents, typically with some variant of a “They should not be imprisoned for doing their job/defending our borders” as the reason. I will admit that I don’t see why these men should be imprisoned for doing their jobs, but there is a bit of murkiness to the affair that makes it not so clear cut.

Compean and Ramos were found guilty in a jury trial of violating the civil rights of Osvaldo Aldrete Davila when they shot him in Fabens, Texas, about 30 miles east of El Paso, then tampering with evidence by picking up shell casings from the shooting.

The ex-agents say Davila had a gun, and that’s why they fired at him, but a gun was never found.

In exchange for his testimony against the two agents, Davila was granted immunity from prosecution by the U.S. government for attempting to smuggle nearly 750 pounds of marijuana – which had a street value of over $1 million – into the United States on the day he was shot.

. . .

“They also had received arms training the day before; that said, if you have an incident like this, you must preserve the evidence and you must report it promptly. Instead, according to court documents, they went around and picked up the shell casings. Furthermore, they asked one of their colleagues also to help pick up shell casings. They disposed of them.”

Ramos and Compean were convicted on 11 of 12 counts.

“The facts of this case are such that I would invite everybody to take a full look at the documented record,” Snow said. “This is not the case of the United States saying, ‘We are not going to support people who go after drug dealers.’ Of course, we are. We think it’s incumbent to go after drug dealers, and we also think that it’s vitally important to make sure that we provide border security so our people are secure.

“We also believe that the people who are working to secure that border themselves obey the law.”

He added: “I do think that there’s been a characterization that somehow the government is turning a blind eye toward the law in enforcing the law.”

I’m not big on granting Davila immunity from prosecution, but there is the smell of some kind of cover-up by the agents, and thosebehind the investigation and decision to prosecute may have just been looking for a way to get more information on what happened. Picking up shell casings and not reporting the shooting sounds fishy, even if it is totally innocuous. Without a lot more information on what happened, what is known, what was found in the investigation, and so on, this seems too hard to judge by outside observers. Maybe I’m wrong on that, though. Should these men be serving prison time? There has been an appeal to President Bush to pardon the two men. Should that be done?

If you want to find out more to help form an opinion, naturally Google news is a good source. From Google, I found a good source of extra information at NewsMax, as well as some good recent updates from Fox News. The basic information I’m seeing certainly makes the shooting in self-defense claims of the agents believable, but the clean-up and delayed reporting still muddies things up.

[tags]Border agents jailed for shooting drug runner, Should the border patrol agents be released after suspicious shooting?[/tags]