net127

Posted by michael on Fri Jan 14, ‘05 10:30 PM:

Wind writes “According to any journal hosted off of LiveJournal.com, the LiveJournal data center Internap has suffered a critical power failure, leaving all of LiveJournal and its content temporarily offline and requiring the revival of 100+ servers.”

NASA News Releases via Slashdot:

NASA scientists using data from the Indonesian earthquake calculated it affected Earth’s rotation, decreased the length of day, slightly changed the planet’s shape, and shifted the North Pole by centimeters. The earthquake that created the huge tsunami also changed the Earth’s rotation.
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Ken Belson, The New York Times, via news.com, via slashdot.org, writes:

It is the opening line on so many phone conversations these days: This call may be monitored for quality assurance purposes.

The taped message is so common that many callers might assume that no one is ever listening, let alone taking notes. But they would be wrong.

Monitoring is intended to track the performance of call center operators, but the professional snoops are inadvertently monitoring callers, too. Most callers do not realize that they may be taped even while they are on hold.

It is at these times that monitors hear husbands arguing with their wives, mothers yelling at their children, and dog owners throwing fits at disobedient pets, all when they think no one is listening. Most times, the only way a customer can avoid being recorded is to hang up.

“You could have a show on Broadway just playing the calls,” said Mike Schrider, president of J.Lodge, a call monitoring service based in Hammonton, N.J.
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Posted by CmdrTaco on Slashdot:

A number of announcements from the Mac World keynote this afternoon. The iPod Shuffle is pack-of-gum sized, no screen, weighs less than an ounce. Ships today, $99 for the half gig, $149 for a gig. The Mac Mini is the headless iMac… 6×6x2.5 with all the expected plugs, starting at $499. Lot’s of tiger bits, spotlight, virtual folders in Mail.app. iLife ‘05 will ship Jan 22. iPhoto gets folders and video support. iMovie supports HD. GarageBand gets 8 channel recording. iWork includes Keynote 2, and ‘Pages’ the new word processor and ships the same day as iLife.

Derek Sooman, TechSpot, reports:
American software pirate Kishan Singh, from Lanham in Maryland, has been jailed for 18 months after running a website offering illegal copies of a range of business software. Singh, who had earlier pleaded guilty to a charge of copyright infringement, was found guilty of running a website offering illegal copies of software that was valued at up to $120,000. Singh operated a pay-for-access site offering software from companies including Adobe, Autodesk, Macromedia and Microsoft. Frequently, all copy-protection and other counter-piracy measures had been removed from the software.

“Evidence revealed that thousands of pirated software programs were downloaded from Singh’s website by users from around the world during the six-month period charged.” - Spokesman for the US prosecutor’s office.

Howard Kurtz, Washington Post Staff Writer, reports:

The Education Department paid commentator Armstrong Williams $241,000 to help promote President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law on the air, an arrangement that Williams acknowledged yesterday involved “bad judgment” on his part.

In taking the money, funneled through the Ketchum Inc. public relations firm, Williams produced and aired a commercial on his syndicated television and radio shows featuring Education Secretary Roderick R. Paige, touted Bush’s education policy, and urged other programs to interview Paige. He did not disclose the contract when talking about the law during cable television appearances or writing about it in his newspaper column.

Congressional Democrats immediately accused the administration of trying to bribe journalists. Williams’s newspaper syndicate, Tribune Media Services, yesterday canceled his column. And one television network dropped his program pending an investigation.
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COOKY McCLUNG, Special to The Star Democrat, reports:,

CHESTERTOWN — Lucy the Goose was memorialized last Friday with a service fit for a high-ranking diplomat. Which, in a way, she was, having served faithfully, if sometimes cantankerously, as Chestertown’s avian ambassador for at least a dozen years.

I found her dead Dec. 19 on my daily pre-dawn walk, pausing to burst into tears before dashing home to call Chestertown Town Manager Bill Ingersoll. He responded immediately by contacting Ned Stirling, head of town maintenance, who had Lucy removed from the marshes where she lay. Even before Ned arrived, however, another early morning walker, noticing Lucy’s lifeless body, immediately called 9-1-1. Our police responded with compassion, checking to make sure the goose’s death was not a result of someone harming her. They found she had died of natural causes.
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A Staff Reporter for India Daily writes:

New Delhi is in the middle of a big secret internal debate. On one side the largest democracy of the world is eager to explain to its citizens and to the world about the ongoing contacts with the UFOs and extra-terrestrials. On the other hand there are invisible untold international protocols that prohibit doing anything that may cause worldwide fear and panic.
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Taipei 101 tower (archive picture)

Chris Hogg, BBC, Taipei reports:

It’s not often that you get to stand - literally - on the roof of the world.

But I’ve done it and I can tell you that it’s pretty windy. And if like me you don’t have a head for heights, it’s best not to look down.

I was recently given a sneak preview of the view from the top of the 508-m tall Taipei 101 building, which opened on Friday in time to host the New Year Countdown.

At 101 storeys high, it beats its nearest rival the Petronas Towers in Malaysia by more than 50m, to become the world’s tallest building.
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Reuters reports:

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A 15-year-old Wisconsin girl who received an experimental treatment to become the first person known to survive rabies without a vaccination has been released from hospital, a spokeswoman for the hospital said on Sunday.
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