The much-ballyhooed opening of Heathrow's £4 billion Terminal 5 has been a debacle. British Airways has canceled 208 flights since Thursday, and has "stranded" between 15,000 and 20,000 bags. Area hotels are crammed with stuck BA passengers and are gouging on pricing, prompting BA to lift its stingy (and possibly illegal) £100 limit on hotels for stuck passengers. This is the terminal with the crackpot fingerprinting procedure -- passengers are fingerprinted at check-in and at boarding.
And lest you think you might try to get there with a change of underwear by going hand-baggage only, think again. BA's baggage-checkers are being serious rules-lawyers about hand-luggage limits, forcing passengers to check hand-bags that are less than an inch oversize, dooming the luggage to the nonfunctional baggage system at T5.
On one of the delayed planes, passengers on flight BA0662 to Larnaca were held on the tarmac for some four hours before leaving at 1205 GMT.
One, Elizabeth Drury, told the BBC the captain said they would be leaving without any luggage.
They had been told this was because some of the bags initially put on the plane had not been screened properly.
"The whole experience has been meltdown," she said.
A group of school pupils on flight BA285 to San Francisco also said they were told by the airline that their bags were not on board and they could choose whether or not to travel. They were bound for a skiing trip.
"It could ruin it because we are scheduled to start skiing tomorrow," said one schoolgirl, Natalie Bakhurst.
Espen sez, "I thought you would appreciate this cartoon that explains the difference between covariation and causality. In English, the caption is 'During a convivial gathering there is talk of the unhygienic aspect of using galoshes. One of those present chips in: "Yes, I've also noticed this. Every time I've woken up with my galoshes on, I've had a headache."'"
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(Thanks, Link
New York Times writer John Schwartz took a joyride in a new NASA lunar vehicle that sounds like it ought to come with a Garth Brooks CD:
IT turns on a dime and parallel-parks like a dream.
On the downside, it’s a little pricey (at $2 million or so) and its top speed is a pokey 15 miles an hour.
Still, there’s a lot to like about the concept car taking shape here at the Johnson Space Center.
Did I say car? The new moon buggy conceived by space center engineers is anything but a car or a buggy. Its official name is Chariot, and this, my friends, is a truck. A heavy duty workhorse of a truck.
“America basically created the truck,” said Lucien Junkin, the chief engineer on the project. And so, he says, why not take a truck to the moon if NASA, as planned, takes humans back, as early as 2020?
It is a beguiling idea, especially as realized in a vehicle infused with the lessons learned from the Apollo-era moon missions and the subsequent success of the Spirit and Opportunity robotic rovers on Mars. This model took a year to build. It looks kind of like what you’d get if a monster truck had a ménage à trois with a flatbed trailer and a medieval siege engine....
Joe Barr writes "Robin Miller has an exclusive video interview with Larry Rosen and Fred Popowich this morning on Linux.com about their new open source business model which includes software patents in its DNA. Their motto is 'Free for open source, everyone else pays.' Larry Rosen was once legal counsel for the OSI." Linux.com and Slashdot share a corporate parent.
In this video, an elephant is led to an easel, picks up a paintbrush, and paints a picture of an elephant holding a flower. Or at least, that's what appears to happen -- there are lots of cuts in the video and it's hard to say what's really going on. Fake or real, it's a great way to spend 8 minutes.
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By Simon Read, Contra Costa Times, Walnut Creek, Calif. Mar. 29--ANTIOCH -- Antioch's continued campaign against crime and neighborhood blight will be the key topics of discussion today when city leaders meet with residents for the latest "Quality of Life" forum. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Mar 2008 | 5:00 pm
PERKINS -- The Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma will receive a $62,604 grant to help manage its Wildlife Conservation Area, which includes the Grey Snow Eagle House, the first federally funded eagle rehabilitation facility in the United States. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Mar 2008 | 5:00 pm
TreeUtah is sponsoring the Tree Huggers Ball to raise money during its annual Green Gala fundraiser. This year's event will take place April 4, 6 to 9 p.m. at Pierpont Place, 163 W. Pierpont Ave. (240 South), Salt Lake City. There will be live music, food, drinks and a silent auction. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Mar 2008 | 5:00 pm
By Margaret Baker, The Sun Herald, Biloxi, Miss. Mar. 29--GULFPORT -- Gulfport residents trying to save the downtown library building will have another chance Thursday to appeal to the City Council to save the building from demolition. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Mar 2008 | 5:00 pm
By Deseret Morning News editorial On paper, the plan to run water from Lake Powell into St. George looks like a no-brainer. Supposedly, the water will run downhill all the way. The population of St. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Mar 2008 | 5:00 pm
The northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf has been officially removed from the federal list of endangered species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Friday. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Mar 2008 | 5:00 pm
By Geoffrey Fattah Deseret Morning News The Utah Supreme Court has ruled that Salt Lake County officials were wrong in denying a government records request by the Deseret Morning News seeking review of a county sexual harassment report. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Mar 2008 | 5:00 pm
By Jasen Lee Deseret Morning News After weeks of negotiations with various potential suitors, the board of trustees of Community Wireless of Park City voted unanimously Friday to sign a letter of intent to sell the assets of Salt Lake City-based KCPW FM to Wasatch Public Media Inc. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Mar 2008 | 5:00 pm
May I make a respectful suggestion that parents teach their kids to be more sensitive to persons who are physically "different." May I also suggest that schools offer sensitivity classes as part of the curriculum. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Mar 2008 | 5:00 pm
An anonymous reader writes "According to an article in Xconomy, iPhone hacker and author Jonathan Zdziarski was invited to speak at an Apple Store in Cambridge, MA last week where he talked about the history of iPhone hacking, jail-breaking, and limitations of the official SDK. From the article, "Zdziarski was one of the first software engineers to figure out how to hack the iPhone, and he's the author of a forthcoming O'Reilly Media book called iPhone Open Application Development, which gives readers explicit instructions on jail-breaking iPhones. So for Apple to give Zdziarski the podium at an Apple retail location is a little like Steve Ballmer inviting Linus Torvalds to speak at a Windows product launch." Zdziarski reports in his own blog how the open source community was on the iPhone developer scene as early as 2007, long before enterprises got there, and estimates that nearly 40% of all iPhones have been jail-broken to run the third-party community software installer. Finally, this story from Top Tech News suggests that open source software might actually create competition for Apple's "official" developers, because applications using the open source iPhone compiler are not subject to the same limitations as official Apple SDK programs are."
DimitryGH followed up on the earlier news that the MacBook Air lost CanSecWest by noting that "Last year's winner of the CanSecWest hacking contest has won the Vista laptop in this year's competition. According to the sponsor TippingPoint's blog, Shane Macaulay used a new 0day exploit against Adobe Flash in order to secure his win. At the end of the day, the only laptop (of OS X, Vista, and Ubuntu) that remained unharmed was the one running Ubuntu. How's that for fueling religious platform wars?"
In this video, an elephant is led to an easel, picks up a paintbrush, and paints a picture of an elephant holding a flower. Or at least, that's what appears to happen -- there are lots of cuts in the... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 2:57 pm
Carolina Botero of the Colombian Creative Commons project writes in to tell us about a new, rush-rush project to change the Colombian school curriculum to emphasise, a one-sided, protectionist view of... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 2:37 pm
Carolina Botero of the Colombian Creative Commons project writes in to tell us about a new, rush-rush project to change the Colombian school curriculum to emphasise, a one-sided, protectionist view of copyright, without reference to the values to Columbian society arising from sharing, fair use, and the public domain. The clock is ticking, and Colombians need to get involved now before this becomes policy:
A comprehensive reading of the document suggests that the Colombian state is focusing its efforts and resources into developing our own version of "Captain Copyright" that will give educational recommendations for children, academics and public officials and will likely produce a surveillance state.
The document's main argument is that our country's intellectual property development relies solely on "protection and enforcement". Such a conclusion is based on the fact that the revenue for intellectual property related industries is higher in developed countries than in ours. The document has absolutely no references or background research, achievements and implications of recent approaches such as Free Software, Open Access, Open Educational Resources, Open Business, etc.
By Andrew Liszewski I don't mean to demean my local refuse pickup professionals. In fact, most people don't realize how important their jobs really are. (And they probably have a great union.) But is this... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 2:31 pm
By Brian Lazenby, Chattanooga Times/Free Press, Tenn. Mar. 29--Best Buy will unveil Chattanooga's first and only Apple Shop today at the Gunbarrel Road location where an official said it will help bring new technology to the city. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Mar 2008 | 2:00 pm
By DAVID PROSSER OUTLOOK Any victims of the great HBOS short-selling sting who were expecting justice to be swiftly dispensed must be growing more disappointed by the day. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Mar 2008 | 2:00 pm
By Stephen Foley A promise by the biggest broadband provider in the US that it would stop discriminating against users who swap music and video online has failed to quell a grassroots movement demanding legislation to protect equal access to the internet. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Mar 2008 | 2:00 pm
Home News IN BRIEF *Derbyshire police arrested six children for allegedly using a social networking website to organise gang fights. Detectives acted on intelligence that the children used Bebo to arrange a series of fights in Derby involving rival groups between November and January. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Mar 2008 | 2:00 pm
dooling writes "In case you were thinking of building your own atom bomb, you may want to weigh your intellectual property liability. It seems there are over 2000 patents covering the atom bomb. To avoid publishing the patents, a central tenet of the patent system, "the project made use of an obscure law whereby patent applications could be filed but no one would actually look at them or evaluate them. They would just be stamped secret and stored in a vault at the patent office." The irony here is that while all the patents were essentially stored in the same place at the patent office and written to be understandable by any engineer, the Manhattan Project worked diligently to compartmentalize knowledge, using code names for just about all aspects of the project and keeping tight security on all information. It seems the patents were filed to give the U.S. government an essential monopoly on the burgeoning nuclear industry and protect it against others who might patent similar technologies later."
FriendFeed released their API just a few days ago, but third party developers are already scrambling to build on top of the service. We just heard that Howard Baines will be releasing an Adobe AIR application... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 1:37 pm
DragonFire1024 writes "Wikinews.org — The Wikileaks website, which publishes sensitive and censored material submitted by anonymous contributors, has experienced unprecedented levels of Internet traffic today through public interest. This interest has caused the website's servers to be unable to meet the enormous demand of over 164 gigabytes of download traffic within twenty-four hours, leading the site to be temporarily inaccessible."
More fighting in Iraq. Somalia in chaos. People in this country cant afford their mortgages and in some places now they cant even afford rice. None of this nor the rest of the grimness on the front page... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 12:36 pm
In this week's CBC Search Engine podcast, there's a hilarious interview with "Joey Chaos," a teenaged new-wave goth rocker who's upset that some roboticists in Texas "stole" his name and look for their robot. The Search Engine folks point out that there are plenty of other Joey Chaoses, even bringing one on the line.
Link, MP3 Link
(Disclosure: I am a paid columnist for Search Engine)
In this week's CBC Search Engine podcast, there's a hilarious interview with "Joey Chaos," a teenaged new-wave goth rocker who's upset that some roboticists in Texas "stole" his name and look for their... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 12:35 pm
Over on the Sociological Images blog, a post entitled "The Male Gaze Does Not Allow for Boy Nipples" notes that the men in this giant wrestling billboard have all had their nipples removed.
They were photoshopped out because of a law in Florida that prohibits the display of nipples. Since men's nipples are not sexualized in the same way that women's are, the authors of the law were likely thinking of women's bodies as they penned this ban. Thus, it illustrates that it is women's bodies that we think of when we think of bodies on display because of the adoption (by men and women alike in this culture) of a (heteronormative) male gaze.
Over on the Sociological Images blog, a post entitled "The Male Gaze Does Not Allow for Boy Nipples" notes that the men in this giant wrestling billboard have all had their nipples removed. They were... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 12:21 pm
Full disclosure: My wife and I are investors in S-Curve Records, an indie label run by our friend Steve Greenberg. Little Jackie is an S-Curve artist. OK, now that I am done with that, Little Jackie is... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 12:20 pm
Every once in a while I like to show some analytics about this blog. I get the sense that the sources of traffic to this blog have been changing recently. Let's start by comparing the high level sources... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 11:55 am
Barry sez, "An internal memo, explaining how to beat the Mortgage Loan Computer System (Zippy) at JPM Chase was leaked to the Portland Oregonian. The memo gives advice for fooling the system to get ... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 11:55 am
This dope-smuggling Bible from the November 1928 issue of Modern Mechanix illustrates the perpetual ingenuity of dope fiends:
Mechanical ingenuity of narcotic smugglers is constantly being tested in devising new methods of bringing their contraband goods safely into the country. The picture shows a Bible which has been hollowed out in the center to provide a hiding place for thousands of dollars worth of morphine and other opiates. The book was confiscated by Internal Revenue inspectors.
FreedomFighter writes "Since the release of Windows Vista, Creative has promised their Sound Cards as being 'Vista Ready'. Unfortunately, as many unlucky customers did discover, this is not true. What the users actually found were buggy, feature crippled drivers. Creative insisted that features such as Decoding of Dolby® Digital and DTS(TM) signals and DVD-Audio which worked fine in WinXP, would not work on windows Vista. With Creative releasing less than one new driver a year, things seemed bleak. Fortunately, a talented user, Daniel_K, was recently able to 'fix' many of the drivers, enabling the incompatible features and also fixing many bugs. Just today Creative has decided to put a stop to this. They removed all links to his modified drivers, and banned several users who were posting links to the now banned drivers."
By Kris Sherman, The News Tribune, Tacoma, Wash. Mar. 29--thenewstribune.com Posted online at 10:39 a.m. Friday A new wave of up-to-date computer equipment is coming to Tacoma schools. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Mar 2008 | 11:00 am
Ponoko is an on-demand service that allows merchants to upload their designs and customers to purchase items based upon those designs. It's already working for one furniture maker.
More fighting in Iraq. Somalia in chaos. People in this country cant afford their mortgages and in some places now they cant even afford rice. None of this nor the rest of the grimness on the front page... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 10:36 am
Good news for gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains: They no longer need federal protection. The bad news for the animals? Plans are already in the works to hunt them. Federal... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 10:04 am
Sydney's iconic Opera House and Harbour Bridge have gone dark as the first major world city to turn off the lights in this year's Earth Hour. The lights on the Harbour Bridge turned... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 9:51 am
Sydney's iconic Opera House and Harbour Bridge have gone dark as the first major world city to turn off the lights in this year's Earth Hour. The lights on the Harbour Bridge turned... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 9:42 am
anomalous cohort writes "CrunchGear has an interesting interview of the Director of Inflight Entertainment for the airline Virgin America discusses their adoption of Linux for the passenger's seat back computers. 'The ability to compose a music-video playlist is pretty cool and on the horizon. The READ section is also awesome in that it takes what is typically a bunch of wasted trees (excess newspapers, periodicals) and allows us to be more environmentally friendly and timely with things like news/event info/sports/entertainment etc.'"
Scientists have adopted the remote controller from the Nintendo Wii games console to operate military robots, according to a new report. The "Wiimote" control system... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 9:22 am
Remains of the oldest known Western European, a human creature that lived more than a million years ago, have been found in Spain. Teeth and a jaw bone were discovered... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 9:22 am
The leader of Scotland's Roman Catholic Church who attacked the Government's controversial embryology laws has agreed to meet scientists involved in stem cell research. Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 9:17 am
Lights dimmed and flickered out in New Zealand and Fiji on Saturday as the two countries became the first to launch Earth Hour, a global campaign to raise awareness about climate change. Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 8:03 am
Critics thought it was over the top when Amazon.com Inc. expanded from books into music in 1998. When the Web retailer let competitors start selling things alongside its own inventory in 2000, they said Amazon had gone nuts. In both cases, Amazon proved them wrong. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Mar 2008 | 8:00 am
By Jang, Keum Seong Hwang, Seon Young; Choi, Ja Yun ABSTRACT BACKGROUND: The aims of this study were to identify the independent factors associated with intermittent addiction and addiction to the Internet and to examine the psychiatric symptoms in Korean adolescents when the demographic and Internetrelated factors were controlled. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Mar 2008 | 8:00 am
Google Inc. plans to bid for wireless spectrum in an upcoming government auction, raising the possibility the Internet's leading search engine will become a wireless service provider. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Mar 2008 | 8:00 am
By Krietsch, Beth FACT FILE In the news A recent study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project determined that female teens are the primary creators of Web content, far outpacing their male peers in the areas of blogging, Web site building, and creating social networking profiles. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Mar 2008 | 8:00 am
Dear Propeller Heads: I am a sales guy, so I have lots of places to go and people to meet. Do I need to be on MySpace, too? A: How do you have the time to write to us? Shouldn't you be closing a deal? The Internet can be an effective sales tool. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Mar 2008 | 8:00 am
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The US Patent & Trademark Office has invalidated all 44 claims in Blackboard's patent. While this is a non-final action [PDF], which means that Blackboard will be able to appeal, it does represent a win for the Software Freedom Law Center which had requested the reexamination of Blackboard's patent. It is not yet known how this will affect the $3.1M judgment Blackboard won from Desire2Learn."
A rare antelope species already under threat from poaching in Mongolia is facing a new danger _ worsening traffic. As affluent residents acquire motorbikes and cars in parts of western Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 7:18 am
Several Asian Pacific cities were Saturday preparing to plunge into darkness as they kick off the first leg of the Australia-led 'Earth Hour' campaign to raise awareness about global... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 7:02 am
Research shows odors linked with negative experiences are more easily recalled -- a handy survival trait. The discovery could shed light on disorders such as post-traumatic stress syndrome. ... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 7:00 am
A 10-second song clip was captured in 1860 as an etching on paper. The phonograph came along 17 years later. Researchers... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 7:00 am
Materials that are similarly dense at the tip but more flexible at the base could have human applications, scientists say. ... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 7:00 am
Researchers have found a way to play back recordings that were made 17 years before Thomas Edison patented the phonograph. ... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 7:00 am
Cuba said Friday that it would allow all Cubans to buy and use cellphones, the latest step by new President Raul Castro to improve access to consumer goods. Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 7:00 am
ngkabra writes "In November 2007, a previously unheard of supercomputer called EKA, built by CRL, India came out of nowhere to become the 4th fastest supercomputer in the world. It is also the only supercomputer in the top 10 that hasn't taken any government funding — which means it has no strings attached against commercial exploitation. That is one of the reasons why Yahoo! chose EKA for the cloud computing research that they announced at the Hadoop Summit earlier this week. Yesterday, I attended a presentation by the team that built EKA, and they touched upon a lot of the technical details of EKA, and the challenges faced in designing and building it, which makes for interesting reading."
Australia will be one of the first countries in the world to turn off its lights for an hour Saturday night as part of a global campaign to raise awareness about climate change. Sydney Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 4:24 am
Soldiers in the Bad Voodoo platoon stationed in Iraq carry high-def videocameras and shoot the raw footage for a new documentary, Bad Voodoo's War, by director Deborah Scranton. The film airs Tuesday on PBS' Frontline.
In the battle of the billionaire media moguls, the protg won. A Delaware Chancery Court judge ruled Friday that Barry Diller could go forward with a plan to split his e-commerce conglomerate IAC/InterActiveCorp... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Mar 2008 | 3:36 am
Nature is reporting that a new distributed computing application is looking to monitor earthquake data using the accelerometer in many computing devices. In the long run, "Quake-Catcher" will hopefully be fast enough to give warning before major earthquakes. "If it works, it will be the cheapest seismic network on the planet and could operate in any country. It wouldn't be as sensitive as traditional networks of seismometers, but Lawrence says that's not the point. 'If you have only two sensors in an area, you have to have a perfect system. If you have 15 sensors in a system it [can] be less perfect. One hundred, one thousand, ten thousand -- your need for the system to be perfect becomes much smaller,' he says. 'That's really our approach -- just to have massive numbers.'"
Dutch politician Geert Wilders' 15-minute video is taken offline by LiveLeaks after garnering more than 3 million views. The website cites "threats to our staff of a very serious nature."
Who knew getting medieval on a bunch of monsters could be so much fun? Viking: Battle for Asgard isn't the best game ever, but it's easy to get hooked by the action.
The open-source music player built on Mozilla code was already stable. Now it's just better than ever, with new features and bug fixes included in the latest version.
Today on the Worth1000 photoshopping contest: everyday objects underpinned with clockwork.
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