30 setembro 2002

ECO-TERRORES - Ex-conselheiro de Clinton abre site "vote.com" em Portugal: O ex-conselheiro de Bill Clinton Dick Morris vai lançar em Portugal uma iniciativa de e-política em parceria com uma equipa local. O site vote.com, que tem dois milhões de utilizadores só nos Estados Unidos, vai actualizar os temas quentes da actualidade, propondo aos cidadãos portugueses que votem. Os resultados serão depois enviados aos órgãos de soberania nacional, tal como nos EUA são encaminhados para o Congresso e o Presidente.
Demeaning Dick Morris: Unfortunately, Morris has also shown himself to be a craven character. He's the man who betrayed his friend, Bill Clinton, by creating a high risk personal situation that dragged the presidency into a media scandal. He then went from being Clinton's chief strategist to a role as a commentator for Fox, where he did a slow striptease that revealed much of what he knew about the White House.
"High risk personal situation"?... The Morris Resignation (August 29, 1996): President Clinton's top political advisor, Dick Morris, resigned today amid allegations of a relationship with a prostitute.
CULTURAS IN VITRO - New Nirvana song reaches airwaves: A long-anticipated Nirvana song that's been the subject of much speculation and litigation finally surfaced on the nation's airwaves this week, more than eight years after singer Kurt Cobain killed himself.
.DE! Blondes 'to die out in 200 years': Scientists believe the last blondes will be in Finland
[03.10.02] Extinction of Blondes Vastly Overreported: Media Fail to Check Root of 'Study'
The World Health Organization says there is no such study - and that most journalists didn't call to check.
"We've certainly never conducted any research into the subject," WHO spokeswoman Rebecca Harding said yesterday from Geneva. "It's been impossible to find out where it came from. It just seems like it was a hoax."
The health group traced the story to an account Thursday on a German wire service, which in turn was based on a two-year-old article in the German women's magazine Allegra, which cited a WHO anthropologist. Harding could find no record of such a man working for the WHO.

26 setembro 2002

VITAMEDIAS - The Top 100 Word Spy [new] words
ECO-TERRORES - Uncle oSAMa Says: I Want YOU To Invade Iraq
ECO-TERRORES - Post 9/11 Conspiracism
VITAMEDIAS - When Bloggers Commit Journalism: When do webloggers commit journalism? What do informed amateurs and niche experts bring to the media ecosystem? Should journalists blog? And should they rely on weblogs as news sources? Should bloggers and those in traditional media engage in a dance of fear and loathing, or do both sides stand to gain from the other? Should blogging be taught in journalism classes?
VITAMEDIAS - A Subjective Transcript The September 17, 2002, Panel Sponsored by the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism Entitled "Weblogs - Challenging Mass Media and Society"
CULTURAS IN VITRO - A Musician Writes It, A Rapper Borrows It: A Swap or a Theft? The heart of the matter is the Beastie Boys' song "Pass the Mic," which has a willowy, elongated flute sound rising above its cluster of rock instruments, breakbeats and turntable scratches. The exotic sounding tidbit, looped more than 40 times during the Beastie's track, is a six-second, three-note performance that the Beastie Boys clipped out of a 1982 recording called "Choir," a song written and performed by Newton, a professor at Cal State L.A. and former Guggenheim fellow.
CULTURAS IN VITRO - English as She is Spoke By Jose da Fonseca and Pedro Carolino.
In 1855, Jose da Fonseca and Pedro Carolino sat down to write an English phrasebook for Portuguese students. There was just one problem: they didn't know English. Even worse, they didn't own an English-to-Portuguese dictionary. What they did have, though, was a Portuguese-to-French dictionary and a French-to-English dictionary. Perhaps the worst foreign phrasebook ever written, the resulting linguistic train wreck was first published in 1855 and became a classic of unintentional humor. Armed with Fonseca and Carolino's guide, a Portuguese traveler could complain about his writing implements ("This pen are good for notting"), insult a barber ("What news tell me? all hairs dresser are newsmonger"), complain about the orchestra ("It is a noise which to cleave the head"), go hunting ("Let aim it! let make fire him!"), and consult a handy selection of truly mystifying Idiotisms and Proverbs ("Nothing some money nothing of Swiss.") Mark Twain, prefacing an American edition, marveled of its "miraculous stupidities" that "Nobody can add to the absurdity of this book, nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect."
$12 clothbound.
CULTURAS IN VITRO - Captive audiences bite bullet, accept pre-movie advertising: Movie fans who pay seven or eight bucks for a film are, in some cases, bombarded with the same ads they watch on free prime-time TV.
According to the theaters and the companies selling the commercial spots, people enjoy the ads.
.DE! Electrolux Kelvinator :: Washy Talky The first talking washing machine
CONTAMINANTES - Panel Says Bell Labs Scientist Faked Discoveries: Dr. Schön did not return a phone call asking for comment. In written comments in the report, he admitted he had made mistakes and apologized, but he insisted that his findings were all based on experimental observations. "I am convinced that they are real," he wrote, "although I could not prove this to the investigation committee."
CULTURAS IN VITRO - Hollywood's Gadget Factories: A miniature camera disguised as a lipstick generates a building's 3-D blueprint. An electronic card lets a PC user masquerade as the network system administrator. A wireless device copies all the data from a nearby computer.
No, these aren't exhibits from the International Spy Museum or the latest toys for sale at the local hacker convention. Although some of the underlying technology readily exists, they are Hollywood inventions
Ssshhh. Control your noise. Mimes Brought In To Solve Noise Problem [in Madrid]
ECO-TERRORES - Technology vs. Civil Liberties? Government's Use of Biometrics Security Technology Worries Some Privacy Activists
CONTAMINANTES - France to unveil air-powered car
Air-powered Autos
GM's Hy-Wire Brakes Driving Mold
VITAMEDIAS - As 25 Recomendações do grupo de trabalho sobre o Serviço Público Televisivo (SPT):
1. O SPT deve respeitar e fazer respeitar (...) os direitos de autor (...);
2. É recomendável que o SPT apresente, diariamente, um boletim informativo com informação local ou regional;
3. Que o SPT inclua um boletim de informação para crianças e jovens;
4. Que apresente, regularmente, programas essencialmente baseados em entrevistas;
5. Que apresente, regularmente, programas de debate sobre temas de actualidade (...);
6. Que apresente magazines semanais ou quinzenais dedicados a áreas específicas da informação, como as questões internacionais, as artes, a ciência e tecnologia, o ambiente e a cultura popular (...);
7. É recomendável a criação de espaço regular de programação, pelo menos mensal, no qual o provedor do SPT analise casos que lhe tenham sido submetidos (...);
8. Que apresente, pelo menos semanalmente, um documentário português, bem como integre na sua programação regular documentários estrangeiros de referência;
9. É igualmente recomendável o desenvolvimento de uma linha de programas biográficos e históricos;
10. Que a ficção de mero entretenimento se submeta aos princípios e obrigações do SPT;
11. Que não apresente telenovelas (...);
12. Que promova a criação e produção de teatro adaptado ao meio televisivo (...);
13. (...) Que a programação geral inclua com critério programas de entretenimento, como concursos de conhecimentos gerais ou específicos, talk shows e programas generalistas destinados a crianças e jovens;
14. (..) Que a divulgação da música popular no SPT tenha em consideração três critérios: a qualidade, a novidade e o top de vendas (...);
15. Que envide esforços para gravar e efectivamente apresentar recitais, concertos, ópera, bailado e outros espectáculos (...);
16. Que procure desenvolver uma produção constante de telefilmes nacionais, em produção própria ou co-produção (...);
17. Que fomente obras de novos realizadores e arrisque na descoberta, nomeadamente através de curtas metragens (...);
18. Que procure apresentar provas (...) em que participem selecções e desportistas portugueses (...);
19. Que apresente um programa de informação e/ou magazine desportivo (...);
20. É recomendável que a política de aquisições de produção internacional, proporcione uma alternativa aos canais comerciais (...);
21. Que a televisão do SPT desenvolva a informação relativa às regiões mais desfavorecidas (...);
22. Que inclua obras experimentais e de vanguarda.
23. Que tenha uma importante componente educativa e de ligação às universidades (...);
24. Que preste uma atenção continuada aos arquivos (...);
25. Recomenda-se a preparação de um programa da máxima qualidade pedagógica e técnica destinado ao ensino da língua portuguesa.

[Na realidade, parece mais uma grelha de programação do que a definição do serviço público de televisão...]

25 setembro 2002

PHOTO-GRAFIA - Extensive Use of the Moon
CULTURAS IN VITRO - Corrupt CDs + News: These are the music CDs that:
1. Prevent you from copying it for personal use or from playing it on computerized devices (computers, DVD players, game consoles like PlayStation, MP3 players, consumer CD duplicators, high-end stereo equipment and car CD players).
2. In the United States, Canada and the UK, these "copy-protected" CDs are often unmarked. Once you buy it, you can only exchange it and hope that the replacement isn't garbage too.
CULTURAS IN VITRO - Movie Confab Hears Ugly 'C' Word: Intertainer leveled 14 counts of antitrust violations at AOL Time Warner, Vivendi Universal and Sony, claiming they have withheld movies from being licensed by unaffiliated companies while they developed their own on-demand streaming service called Movielink.
ECO-TERRORES - The National Security Strategy of the United States of America
ECO-TERRORES - Surveillance & Society Launch Issue
CONTAMINANTES - Visions: The Academic "Library" in 2012 : Call for Papers
.DE! Can't Fool Bush: I've captured from The Daily Show the clip of W struggling to say "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Notice the look of abject fear as he realizes that he's going to muff it and it's going to end up on the news, and on damn fool weblogs.
CULTURAS IN VITRO - Schøyen Collection Comprises most types of manuscripts from the whole world spanning over 5000 years. It is the largest private manuscript collection formed in the 20th century.
VITAMEDIAS - How does Audio Blogger work?
CONTAMINANTES - Rethinking the Think Tanks: How industry-funded "experts" twist the environmental debate.
ZITE - iCalShare: Share Your iCalendars!
PHOTO-GRAFIA - Molecular Expressions Beershots Photo Gallery: Photomicrographs (photographs taken through an optical microscope) of the World's most famous beers, arranged by country
ECO-TERRORES - Secrets of September 11 (The New York Review of Books)
Three-minute discrepancy in tape: Cockpit voice recording ends before Flight 93's official time of impact [...] Aviation experts said there could be several explanations for the gap.
ECO-TERRORES - Unveiled: the thugs Bush wants in place of Saddam: Corrupt, feckless and downright dangerous. Some say they make the Butcher of Baghdad himself look good. Who are they? The contenders for Saddam Hussein's throne.
Perils of Preemptive War: Why America's place in the world will shift - for the worse - if we attack Iraq
The Legality of Using Force: This effort to gain greater authority contrasts sharply with the approach taken by the president's father. In the run-up to the Persian Gulf war, George H.W. Bush first obtained a United Nations Security Council resolution permitting the use of force against Iraq. Only then did he seek and receive authorization for war from Congress. This is by far the better procedure, allowing Congress to make the final judgment after it becomes clear that no peaceful resolution of the conflict is possible.
Why We Didn't Remove Saddam by George Bush and Brent Scowcroft (March 2, 1998)
U.S. sent Iraq germs in mid-'80s: American research companies, with the approval of two previous presidential administrations, provided Iraq biological cultures that could be used for biological weapons, according to testimony to a U.S. Senate committee eight years ago.
U.S. Diplomatic and Commercial Relationships with Iraq, 1980 - 2 August 1990
CULTURAS IN VITRO - Valenti presents Hollywood's side of the technology story
CONTAMINANTES - Stressed Out? Just Forget About It
PHOTO-GRAFIA - Extreme Ironing Championship
CONTAMINANTES - 10 Most Beautiful Experiments in Physics
1 Young's double-slit experiment applied to the interference of single electrons
2 Galileo's experiment on falling bodies (1600s)
3 Millikan's oil-drop experiment (1910s)
4 Newton's decomposition of sunlight with a prism (1665-1666)
5 Young's light-interference experiment (1801)
6 Cavendish's torsion-bar experiment (1798)
7 Eratosthenes' measurement of the Earth's circumference (3rd century BC)
8 Galileo's experiments with rolling balls down inclined planes (1600s)
9 Rutherford's discovery of the nucleus (1911)
10 Foucault's pendulum (1851)
ECO-TERRORES - La dépression guette le monde: Pourquoi cette dégringolade ? Tour d'horizon de six «virus» qui hypothèquent une reprise économique mondiale déjà convalescente.
1. Purge de la bulle
2. Mauvaise gestion
3. Crise de confiance
4. Risque géopolitique
5. Contagion régionale
6. Médecins démunis
Recession Cut Incomes and Swelled Poverty Rolls, U.S. Says: The number of poor people in the United States rose last year to 32.9 million, an increase of 1.3 million that pushed up the proportion of Americans living in poverty for the first time in eight years, to 11.7 percent, the Census Bureau reported today.

24 setembro 2002

CULTURAS IN VITRO - CDeMUSIC
CONTAMINANTES - Millionaires Lining Up to Buy Personal Gene Maps: A service to map a person's entire genetic code is being offered by America's genome entrepreneur Craig Venter
CONTAMINANTES - Nu Shortcuts in School R 2 Much 4 Teachers: As more and more teenagers socialize online, middle school and high school teachers [...] are increasingly seeing a breezy form of Internet English jump from e-mail into schoolwork. To their dismay, teachers say that papers are being written with shortened words, improper capitalization and punctuation, and characters like &, $ and @.
ECO-TERRORES - Nasdaq below point where bubble started: No matter how low the Nasdaq's stocks have dropped in the past two years, they have always remained above their lowest point in 1998, in the middle of the late 1990s tech run-up.
On Monday, even that was lost.
ZITE - Zero Toys: It Shoots Nothing!!
VITAMEDIAS - All the News Google Algorithms Say Is Fit to Print: Google, the rapidly growing online search engine, introduced a service yesterday that uses its search algorithms - but no human editors - to create a news page that looks not much different from those of many news Web sites.
VITAMEDIAS - That's Advertainment!: Can advertising become entertainment? And vice versa?
It's a hard sell but more advertisers, programmers and cable operators are testing mutations of the traditional 30-second spot, trying to make ads more compelling in the digital broadband era when viewers can skip commercials in a heartbeat.
VITAMEDIAS - BMW Gets Its Own TV Channel: Upscale Carmaker to Run Latest Short-Film Series on DirecTV
VITAMEDIAS - Publishers Trying to Salvage Troubled Magazines: Some of the most troubled magazines are the largest and most storied. Reader's Digest has lost 25 percent of its circulation in the last 10 years, and TV Guide has fallen even more precipitously. Upstarts like Business 2.0, Fast Company, Wired and Red Herring have found out that when the new economy became old news, readers, and especially advertisers, did not necessarily need a new kind of magazine.
VITAMEDIAS - AOL, Disney in Talks to Merge News Operations: Plan would spin off the firms' CNN and ABC News divisions into a stand-alone venture.
ECO-TERRORES - Texas executions are so routine that few notice: His was the 26th execution by the state this year, the third in nine days and the second in 24 hours. Shamburger's finale, like other recent applications of Texas's death penalty, was practically routine.
Of 61 convicts who have been or are scheduled for execution in the United States this year, 35 of them are in Texas.
CULTURAS IN VITRO - Canadian bestseller lists are bunk: "We are in the Dark Ages," says publisher Kim McArthur, who has been sitting on an industry-wide committee studying the way suppliers and retailers in other industries and in other countries track sales and exchange electronic data. "Have you noticed how when a movie opens, we know how many people went the first weekend?", she asks rhetorically. "What we do in books is to say, 'Let's hold our finger up in the air and guess how many people bought our books over the weekend.' That would never, ever happen in a grocery store, in the movies or in the record industry."
CULTURAS IN VITRO - Danger: artist at work
I was one of the hopeful punters who pitched up last week for art activist Santiago Sierra's private view at the Lisson Gallery. The whole place was - now infamously - boarded up. There was (and still is) a sign by the door, spelling it out quite clearly: "Space closed by corrugated metal." Most of the gallery guests, however, seemed unable to read. They poked and pushed, rang every doorbell of the neighbouring buildings, as if desperate for that free glass of wine often available at such gatherings. I sat on the wall across the street to observe.
What struck me was how few paused long enough to think about what was going on. The sign tells you everything, or almost. My favourite was the glam Euro couple, one of whom snapped at the other: "I told you we should have come earlier." The comic humanity of the comings and bemused goings, combined with a rugged, industrial, minimal aesthetic, made it one of the most pleasant private views I have been to in a long while. I think it's a great piece.
.DE! Airport Has Ribbon Cutting, But No Scissors Allowed: It was time to cut the ribbon on a new exhibit at the Pittsburgh airport.
But this would have to be a ribbon-cutting without the cutting, because scissors aren't allowed in the airport anymore. So, the VIPs had to tear the ribbon instead.
VITAMEDIAS - Advertising works, claims new research: Unilever founder Lord Leverhulme famously grumbled that half his advertising worked, the trouble was he never knew which half, and advertisers have searched for decades for proof that their campaigns work. Now a new report claims to offer evidence that it does.
The report, entitled The True Cost of Cutting Adspend: the Impact on Premium Brand Shares, claims many of top UK brands have lost market share over the past few years by scaling back their advertising.
Survey Finds Business Confidence Is Rattled by Economic Weakness: [C]ompanies are increasingly skeptical of the power of advertising to boost sales. For instance, when asked how much sales could improve if agencies always provided their best work, the mean figure marketers gave was 20.4%, well below the year-ago average of 27.7% and the lowest average since 1989.
VITAMEDIAS - 2002 Emmy Award Winners
CONTAMINANTES - Renewed surge in popularity of breast implants: Questions remain about safety - women seem undeterred
The number of women electing to have their breasts enlarged through implant surgery is increasing rapidly. A record 206,000 American women chose to undergo breast augmentation last year, and the industry projects an almost 10 percent increase this year.
That is twice the number of women who were getting cosmetic breast implants a decade ago
.DE! Skirting the Law? Court Says It's Legal to Videotape Up Women's Dresses
VITAMEDIAS - Papers Run Nearly Half Of Top 20 News Sites: Nine of the top 20 news Web sites in the U.S. during August were affiliated with newspapers, according to audience statistics from Nielsen/NetRatings. The same nine made July's top 20.
VITAMEDIAS - Daily Papers Prep Youth-Oriented Spinoffs: Recognizing that their core products aren't reaching many 18-to-34-year-old readers, several newspapers, from Melville, N.Y., to Boise, Idaho, are planning or contemplating spinoffs aimed at them. And alternative-weekly publishers are awaiting these new publications with a mix of curiosity and worry about the competition.
ECO-TERRORES - Blair outlines Iraq evidence: Prime Minister Tony Blair has warned of the urgent need to act after the publication of the UK's long awaited dossier of evidence against Iraq.
Oiling the Wheels of War: Two key concerns underlie the Administration's thinking: First, the United States is becoming dangerously dependent on imported petroleum to meet its daily energy requirements, and, second, Iraq possesses the world's largest reserves of untapped petroleum after Saudi Arabia.
Gore Denounces Bush's Iraq Efforts: ``After Sept. 11, we had enormous sympathy, goodwill and support around the world,'' Gore said. ``We've squandered that, and in one year we've replaced that with fear, anxiety and uncertainty, not at what the terrorists are going to do but at what we are going to do.''
Shoot First: Here's a rough translation of the national security manifesto President Bush unveiled Friday: Shoot first, ask questions later.
ECO-TERRORES - The Security Traders: As Washington prepares to spend tens of billions of dollars on homeland security, companies are gearing up for the biggest government bonanza since the Cold War.
CONTAMINANTES - Indiciplina dos alunos não é o principal factor de stress dos professores... mas sim, o estatuto profissional, a constante mudança de legislação e as relações com os órgãos da tutela, pais e encarregados de educação.
In Japanese schools, disorder spreads: Across Japan these days, by the first or second grade, elementary school students commonly talk out of turn and wrestle with one another in class.
By fourth grade, they are using obscene language, often directed at the teacher or written on the blackboard. And by sixth grade, a growing generation of preteenage rebels has begun walking in and out of classrooms at will, mocking the authority of adults and even attacking teachers who try to restrain them.
PHOTO-GRAFIA - Human-Free Kick: At Robocup 2002, humanoids battle it out in soccer
.DE! Mystery Music Stops Paris Opera
CONTAMINANTES - Dancing on Hitler's grave: A spate of new merchandise, film and TV shows about Hitler has sparked a bitter controversy about humanising the most infamous villain of the 20th century.
CULTURAS IN VITRO - Controversy Shadows Latin Grammys: Carlos Vives, Celia Cruz and La Ley were among top nominees Wednesday for the Latin Grammys, which again were shadowed by a controversy over Cuban participation.
Cuba's 22 nominees, including jazz pianist Chucho Valdes, guitarist Rey Guerra and rapper X Alfonso, couldn't get the proper entry visas to attend the ceremony, Cuba's Vice Culture Minister Abel Acosta said Tuesday. The reasons were unclear.
CULTURAS IN VITRO - When I'm 64: In defense of the Rolling Stones, the Who and the Other Ones: Anyone who says rock 'n' roll is just about youth is a critical fascist.
CONTAMINANTES - Majority of workers won’t quit at 65: Most say they can’t afford to completely retire, survey finds
CULTURAS IN VITRO - Watch and repeat: Hollywood studios continue to reel in moviegoers by repackaging movies from the past.
CULTURAS IN VITRO - Globalization ending dream of national cinema: Here's the real question: Have we entered a period where national cinemas, once such a significant category of cinematic study, are now obsolete?
CULTURAS IN VITRO - Taking aim at 'sanitized' films: After months of watching a gradual proliferation of companies offering sanitized versions of Hollywood hits to sensitive or politically conservative consumers, movie studios and filmmakers have decided it is time to get a handle on this phenomenon.
"This is very dangerous, what's happening here," said Jay Roth, national executive director of the Directors Guild of America. "This is not about an artist getting upset because someone dares to tamper with their masterpiece. This is fundamentally about artistic and creative rights and whether someone has the right to take an artist's work, change it and then sell it."
VITAMEDIAS - Presse: la reprise des hostilités
Gratuits, rachats, crise de Vivendi... c'est l'année de tous les coups.

23 setembro 2002

CULTURAS IN VITRO - Software to Channel Films From PCs to TVs: BroadQ product will use Sony's PlayStation 2 to show downloaded files via digital home network.
VITAMEDIAS - Google to Launch News Search Site
ECO-TERRORES - Coincidence? Market starting to resemble the '30s
Chart the percentage rise and fall of the Nasdaq composite index over the past two years on the same graph as the Dow Jones industrial average in 1929 and, bingo! They look uncomfortably similar. [...]
So how does he explain the similarity of charts?
Coincidence. ``A lot of women look like Marilyn Monroe but they can't act''
.DE! - How to Good-Bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way?
VITAMEDIAS - Reporters Find New Outlet, and Concerns, in Web Logs: Some journalists have already run into trouble with their employers over the contents of their personal sites, with one — a reporter for The Houston Chronicle — having been fired for his efforts. And news media companies may be opening themselves to questions of liability when they set up Web logs on their sites.
VITAMEDIAS - Mr. Greene and His Misdeeds: Back in 1988, Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene had sex with a 17-year-old girl - a senior at Mother McAuley High School - who had recently come to the paper (with her parents, no less) to interview him.
"She seemed to be a bright and perceptive young woman," Greene, then 41, wrote.
But the Tribune's decision to give Greene the boot earlier this month has sparked a debate over whether the punishment was too harsh for what Editor Ann Marie Lipinski called misusing his "status and position at the paper."
CULTURAS IN VITRO - The Cultural Anarchist vs. the Hollywood Police State: A Stanford Professor Is One Supreme Court Decision Away From Ending Copyrights on Thousands of Movies, Books and Songs.
"The world won't end," he says. "Hollywood will just have to find a different way to make money."
ECO-TERRORES - Missing in 9/11 hearings: what 2 presidents knew
Conspicuously absent from three days of riveting hearings chronicling missed opportunities leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks is what was known about Al Qaeda by two key decision-makers: President George W. Bush and his predecessor, Bill Clinton.
The Bush White House says that Congress is not entitled to such information. But a growing number of Republicans and Democrats on the joint House-Senate panel investigating the attacks said last week that if the White House continued its refusal to declassify information on what Bush was told before the attack, they would ask the Senate to take the extraordinary step of overruling Bush's decision to shield the information.
VITAMEDIAS - Jornalista detido em Lisboa por proteger fonte
Mas porque será que apenas o DN explicou que "o que aqui está em causa não são as fontes de um trabalho que tenha sido publicado, mas de uma investigação que (ainda) está a realizar e que poderá, ou não, vir à luz do dia, o que transforma o seu caso em algo de original" (Sigilo protege a investigação)
A Hora da Verdade do Quarto Poder : O jornalista foi agora condenado por recusa de identificar a fonte que lhe declarou ter sido uma cabala a acusação a um dos irmãos Pinto, co-autores do boicote às portagens na ponte 25 de Abril, há sete anos. Certamente meritório, ninguém dirá que este segredo jornalístico protege a santidade.
O condenado é colaborador do "Expresso" - o semanário que abriu uma guerra particular ao dito Portas. O Pe. António Vieira via em tais coincidências a mão de Deus.
O interessante naquela condenação é que talvez não seja coincidência. Ocorre em paralelo com a afirmação do poder da imprensa anticorrupção - e tem lugar porque um jornalista parece querer dificultar a justiça anticorrupção. É uma decisão rara: a outra foi há mais de cinco anos. Coincidência? Talvez os juizes achem que a imprensa tem poder a mais. Talvez, neste particular, os juizes reflictam a opinião da maioria dos portugueses.
ECO-TERRORES - Protecção de dados chumba protocolo entre PJ e Fisco: A Comissão Nacional de Protecção de Dados (CNPD) chumbou o acesso da Polícia Judiciária (PJ) a dados do Fisco e alfândegas, de acordo com um parecer a que o DE teve acesso. O parecer – que não é vinculativo mas que, na prática, trava o tratamento dos dados – analisa o protocolo anunciado pelo Governo como chave para reforçar o combate aos crimes fiscais. O protocolo «viola os direitos fundamentais dos contribuintes», sustenta a CNPD
VITAMEDIAS - Send in the SMS: Text messaging is the darling of the new technology crowd, but media owners are only just waking up to its potential as a medium in its own right.
CULTURAS IN VITRO - Movie spoilers galore! Moviepooper ruins the ending for hundreds of movies!

22 setembro 2002

ECO-TERRORES - Left Behind: Lynne Stewart found a home in the remains of the radical left, defending clients most lawyers wouldn't touch. But now, as she faces trial for aiding and abetting terrorists, she has never been more alone.
PHOTO-GRAFIA - What They Were Thinking: 'The tower has an unobstructed view of every cell in this round cell house.
CONTAMINANTES - Sexed Ed: What is troubling about this breezy new enthusiasm for segregation is not that it may lead to new single-sex schools, some of which will be good schools whatever their gender makeup. What is troubling is the tenor of the arguments. There is no solid body of evidence showing that single-sex education is better for girls or boys.

20 setembro 2002

CULTURAS IN VITRO - Digital Needle: A Virtual Gramophone
VITAMEDIAS - BlogBib CARL 2002: An annotated bibliography on weblogs & blogging
CONTAMINANTES - Department of Education to Delete Years of Research From Its Website
CONTAMINANTES - Villages hustle to sell naming rights: Almost anything can be sponsored
.DE!!!!!!! - Right-wing governments 'increase suicide rates': Right-wing governments may sap some people's will to live and result in more suicides, conclude studies in Britain and Australia. The researchers speculate that losers are more likely to kill themselves in the individualistic, "winner-takes-all" societies favoured by right wing governments, because they are left to fend for themselves. Wide disparities in wealth also sharpen any sense of hopelessness [eu realmente não tenho andado muito bem disposto :-)]
CULTURAS IN VITRO - Disney preps martial arts "Snow White": Disney is negotiating with the Chinese choreographer of groundbreaking action films "The Matrix" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," to direct a live-action take on "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."
The project was until recently known as "Snow White and the Seven Shao Lin."
.DE! - The Antikythera mechanism: [T]he device was an astronomical computer capable of predicting the positions of the sun and moon in the zodiac on any given date.
VITAMEDIAS - The operation was a success (but the patients died): How media spin distorted the outcomes of a study comparing radical prostatectomy with watchful waiting
CULTURAS IN VITRO - Getting the most out of Imax: Imax Corp. [...] says it has developed a technical process that can transform existing 35mm movies into bigger, more vivid 70mm Imax experiences.
VITAMEDIAS - Jornalista José Manso Preto detido por recusar revelar fonte: Segundo Óscar Mascarenhas, secretário [do Conselho Deontológico do Sindicato dos Jornalistas], este é um caso inédito em Portugal.
CULTURAS IN VITRO - Marvel Superheroes to Move Online: Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, The X-Men and other superheroes will be heading to the World Wide Web as characters in multi-player online games.
VITAMEDIAS - Mecs, sexe, télé, la recette pour être lu
VITAMEDIAS - Rangel em entrevista: Pela primeira vez, desde o 25 de Abril, julgo que estamos confrontados com um problema, grave, de concentração em Portugal. Há situações em que os órgãos de comunicação fazem campanhas em defesa dos interesses dos seus próprios accionistas. Há também casos concretos de sonegação de informação, sobretudo nos jornais.
- E na rádio? E na televisão?
A rádio e televisão estão mais distanciadas, os jornais não. Há campanhas feitas contra pessoas, contra instituições. Há jornais que, pura e simplesmente, se colocam ao serviço de partidos políticos e de grupos económicos...
- Não é algo de conjuntural?
Já é estrutural. É, aliás, engraçado ver como uma campanha contra a pessoa A, começa na revista X, estende-se ao jornal Y e, de repente, estão dez órgãos de comunicação a dizer o mesmo, incluindo a televisão...
- Como é que se pode romper esse cerco?
Há varias hipóteses. Uma delas é criar maior diversidade. Esse é, julgo, o grande segredo. [...]
E há o projecto anunciado para a RTP, que, pelo menos na sua origem, conduz ao desmantelamento da RTP.
- Está a falar da RTP2?
Não só, ouvi há dias o dr. Almerindo Marques dizer, com enorme clareza, que a RTP, serviço público actual, acaba no dia 31 de Dezembro. Não fui eu que o disse, foi ele.
- O que é que isso pressupõe?
A convicção que tenho é a de que se está a cometer um erro. Há um Governo legitimidado para tomar decisões, e que será julgado por isso, mas parece-me também que temos uma administração da RTP incipiente e desorientada. Em última instância, o que dr. Almerindo Marques anunciou foi o fim da RTP como serviço público e o nascimento de uma nova empresa em Janeiro. E julgo que isso vai envolver também a rádio...
- Uma fusão entre a RTP e a RDP?
Sim, julgo que será criado um serviço público com um canal de televisão e dois de rádio, retomando-se um modelo antigo não fundado nem no estudo, nem na avaliação das situações.
- A que é que se refere quando fala em desmantelamento da RTP?
Que a RTP vai fechar no dia 31 de Dezembro. É verdade que o dr. Almerindo Marques também anunciou a criação de uma nova empresa. Mas quais serão os seus objectivos? Que publicidade terá? Haverá um ou dois canais? Isto é, avança-se para um projecto sem que exista uma definição clara do que se pretende. É uma pena que se termine com a RTP como serviço público. Não há razões que o justifiquem. Ninguém pensaria, sob pena de haver uma sublevação nacional, em acabar com a BBC ou com a TVE. Em Portugal caminha-se nessa direcção.
Rangel "abre o livro", gestor e ministro recusam fim do serviço público: Presidente do Conselho de Administração, Almerindo Marques: "os portugueses já conhecem bem o conceito de serviço público do Dr. Rangel, desde os tempos da SIC". [...] Almerindo Marques rejeitou que o serviço público de televisão termine em Dezembro, deste ano, ideia sugerida por Rangel, admitindo porém que vai surgir "uma nova empresa".
Opinião corroborada pelo ministro da tutela, Nuno Morais Sarmento, que afirmou à TSF que "se a intenção fosse acabar com a RTP bastaria ter deixado continuar a situação como estava". "É preciso que os portugueses saibam que a RTP gastava um milhão de contos por semana, mais do que o Orçamento de Estado contempla para a cultura e para a educação pré-escolar", justificou.
VITAMEDIAS - 9/11 - Sanitizing the News: The journalists’ restraint was a sign that the day belonged to the victims and their families. Taken to an extreme, however, such restraint can easily turn into something much worse -- and more dangerous -- than laudable self-censorship. Historians, and any citizen who cares about historical memory, must ask: “Who controls these images? Who is to be allowed to view them, and under what circumstances, with what limitations?”
ECO-TERRORES - Não, não e não: Portas gastou o último cartucho (a aparição na TVI). O almirante John Fisher deu um memorável conselho para tratar com escândalos: não se desmente, não se explica, não se pede desculpa. E um escritor americano acrescentou: os que estão do nosso lado não precisam e os que não estão não acreditam.
CONTAMINANTES - 6 Quick Tips on Managing Your Time:
1. One size does not fit all.
2. Paper piles only grow.
3. Heading to a meeting? Go unplugged.
4. The next killer business app? Instant messaging.
5. Delegate: It's the ultimate time-saver.
6. Working in hard-to-reach territories? Voice-mail it.
CULTURAS IN VITRO - Dirty Vegas: The band that Mitsubishi made.
CULTURAS IN VITRO - James Brown’s Kids Sue Papa: James Brown’s daughters have filed a federal lawsuit against the Godfather of Soul, seeking more than $1 million for 25 songs they say they co-wrote.
CONTAMINANTES - Overweight teens file fat lawsuit against McDonald's
CONTAMINANTES - Milk, Cookies And Meds: Use of prescription drugs is growing faster among children than it is among senior citizens and baby boomers, the two traditionally high consumer groups, according to a new study.
ECO-TERRORES - Text of Bush’s draft resolution on Iraq: The President is authorized to use all means that he determines to be appropriate, including force, in order to enforce the United .Nations Security Council Resolutions referenced above, defend the national security interests of the United States against the threat posed by Iraq, and restore international peace and security in the region.
Iraqi foreign minister says country is free of weapons, ready for UN inspection
U.S. Drops Bid to Strengthen Germ Warfare Accord: The Bush administration has abandoned an international effort to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention against germ warfare, advising its allies that the United States wants to delay further discussions until 2006.
Evidence on Iraq Challenged: Experts Question if Tubes Were Meant for Weapons Program
The Economic Costs of Going to War with Iraq
Selling the War on Iraq
CONTAMINANTES - Immigrants arrive healthier: Recent immigrants are healthier than people born in Canada, but the longer they have been in the country, the more the gap narrows, two new studies show.
CONTAMINANTES - More Sci-Than Fi, Physicists Create Antimatter: Physicists working in Europe announced yesterday that they had passed through nature's looking glass and had created atoms made of antimatter, or antiatoms, opening up the possibility of experiments in a realm once reserved for science fiction writers. Such experiments, theorists say, could test some of the basic tenets of modern physics and light the way to a deeper understanding of nature.

19 setembro 2002

CONTAMINANTES - Vision of the Future: Researchers are on the right track to produce artificial sight for the blind.
.DE! - 99.9% of Proper Grammar Is Obsolete
ECO-TERRORES - Five Ways To Spend $1 Billion: We looked at five classic billionaire personality types: the Geek, the Limousine Liberal, the Thrill Seeker, the Hedonist and the Narcissist, and came up with some fanciful ways that they might squander their fortunes.
.DE! - Al-Qaeda Allegedly Engaging In Telemarketing
ECO-TERRORES - U.S. had 12 warnings of jet attacks
U.S. Overlooked Terrorism Signs Well Before 9/11: A House-Senate panel report says Al Qaeda was focusing on a domestic attack and the use of planes as weapons as far back as mid-'90s.
CONTAMINANTES - Skydriving: For $15,000, these guys will make any car go 140 mph
ZITE - Picture Yourself
ECO-TERRORES - Inspections a 'mission impossible' for the UN?
CONTAMINANTES - Biotech food can save millions of African lives
VITAMEDIAS - How much should we blame journalists for the dot-com crash?
TECNO-HOUSE - PS2 shipments reach 40 million: Sony has shipped 40 million PlayStation 2 game consoles worldwide, after passing the 30 million mark on May 5. Of the 40 million units, 10.97 million shipped to Japan, 17.01 million to the United States and 12.06 million to Europe.
TECNO-HOUSE - Audio's Next Big Thing?: We've heard hypersonic sound. It could change everything.
TECNO-HOUSE - Wireless hitchhikers branded as thieves
CONTAMINANTES - Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Diamonds: Space lovers can choose to have their cremated remains launched into earth orbit, or for $25,000, to the moon.
.DE! - Bush related to Churchill & Diana: President Bush, Princess Diana and Winston Churchill are distant relatives whose ancestry can be traced back to a 15th century English squire, genealogists say.
CULTURAS IN VITRO - Pay-Per-View Movies Come to PCs: Studios and Web Companies Test Distribution of Movies on the Net
.DE! - City's "Loaded" With Women: Want to marry a millionairess? You're in the right place. [...] And the No. 1 location to score a megabucks babe is an Alcoholics Anonymous center on the Upper East Side.
CULTURAS IN VITRO - IFPI announces new optional copy control symbol for CDs
VITAMEDIAS - An Old Media Idea Reborn: Content Is King: Three years after the 1990's Internet boom turned into an online debacle of failed acquisitions, plunging stocks and management turmoil for media companies, an old lesson must be re-learned, News Corp. President Peter Chernin said on Wednesday: "content is king."
CULTURAS IN VITRO - Villette Numerique: Festival International de la Création et des Nouveaux Médias
CULTURAS IN VITRO - Violence Online Festival
TECNO-HOUSE - Experts Fault Cybersecurity Plan
Cyber-Security Plan Changes Little
Bush cybersecurity plan found short on details
Draft National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace
CULTURAS IN VITRO - Shameful Art Attack: Is this art? Or assault? A violently disturbing sculpture popped up last week in the middle of Rock Center's busy underground concourse - right in front of the ice-skating rink. It depicts a naked woman, limbs flailing, face contorted, at the exact moment her head smacks pavement following her leap from the flaming World Trade Center.

18 setembro 2002

CULTURAS IN VITRO
Finally, a Fair Fight with Big Music: Telecom giant Verizon is battling the industry's bid to make it name a file-sharing subscriber. It's also defending your right to privacy

Golden Nica: Los 'Oscars' del Arte Digital [Ars Electronica 2002]

ECO-TERRORES
Liberty Wins - So Far: Although they weren't directly attacked, the countries of the European Union passed anti-terrorism measures during the past year that are far more sweeping than anything adopted in the United States.
Special Report: Big Brother

The Open Door: How Militant Islamic Terrorists Entered and Remained in the United States, 1993-2001

A Decade of Deception and Defiance: Saddam Hussein’s Defiance of the United Nations
Iraq's letter accepting U.N. inspections

VITAMEDIAS
Expresso vai acabar com Revista
Contas da Impresa do 1º Semestre 2002

Emap gives away 1m mags to get Closer to readers: The publishing company behind Heat is giving away a staggering 1 million copies of its latest celebrity magazine as part of a £10m promotional push.

The Hollywood Reporter and the Internet Movie Database link to share info

Comic Teetotalers: Like the rest of America, the characters in the comics pages are sobering up.

TECNO-HOUSE
One click away from humiliation: New York woman mistakenly sends e-mail to date
What are the ethics of forwarding an e-mail you were not mean to receive? What if it is sure to humiliate the sender?
QVC Sues Former Star Host Over E-Mail: Television shopping network QVC Inc. is suing former host Kathy Levine, claiming she violated her contract by e-mailing QVC customers to promote her new apparel line just before it debuted on archrival Home Shopping Network.

U.S. cybersecurity plan under fire: Critics say it leaves too much up to users

What Microsoft doesn't want you to know: White Paper [by Novell...]
Beating Bill: Giants like AOL, Palm, and Sony have tried and flailed. But that doesn't mean it can't be done. Some little guys are actually sticking it to Microsoft now -- and what they've learned can mean as much to your business as it does to theirs.

Japanese Game Developers Gear Up for Cyber Wars
Bikes, sex and volleyball: Holiday video games may be a lot more 'adult' than you think.

DVD groups agree to disagree: The two industry groups fighting to set a rewritable DVD standard are showing no interest in working together, but technology tricks and behind-the-scenes talks could inch the sides toward a compromise.

Free Software vs. Open Source

Audio Spotlight - Put sound where you want it

CONTAMINANTES
The incredible shrinking ozone hole: The level of chlorine from chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere is falling, and the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica should close by 2050

Physics in Crisis: Physics is in crisis. We have lost our ideals and focus as a unified field.

The Brain as User Interface: Scientists hijack a rat’s brain to robotize the rodent and train a monkey’s brain to move a cursor

Nanosecrets of Everyday Things

ICT and Urban Form - Urban Planning and Design

A Life on Skid Road: From plain old tire marks, crash reconstructionists can extract a ton of dirty secrets - some that can send you to jail.

.DE!
Death Becomes Them: Pet Preservation Is the Latest Thing in the Taxidermy World

'English only' lands cabbie in trouble: Driver faces assault charge for trying to boot Spanish speaker
The sign inside the taxi said "English Only," but Mauricio Camargo figured talking on his cell phone in Spanish during his ride in from Bush Intercontinental Airport Friday would be no problem. He was wrong.

Man divorces quarrelsome wife for mute woman: A Yemeni man divorced his first wife because she was loud and argumentative and picked a deaf and mute woman as his new bride

Was Sept. 11 really the time to lay a dozen people off? On the anniversary of last year's terror attacks, stock markets delayed their openings. Major League Baseball observed a moment of silence. The president grieved with survivors. Some businesses closed. Many churches opened. And Pulsent, a Milpitas digital imaging company, executed a round of layoffs.

Patriot Troll

PHOTO-GRAFIAS
September 11: One Year from Space

Tuwaitha Nuclear Center, Iraq

Space Imaging: Top 10 Images (2001)

ZITE
Switch

Why We Must Invade Iraq?

17 setembro 2002

Qual o tamanho da blogosfera? 200 mil a 500 mil blogs?
Sexta-feira, Setembro 13, 2002: Mais um artigo sobre weblogs e jornalismo, desta vez no "Los Angeles Times".[...] A autora do artigo cita "unofficial estimates" para dizer que existirão entre 200 mil e 500 mil weblogs actualmente. Já vi o número noutros lados, nomeadamente neste artigo do "Mercury News" e neste do "Daily Californian", mas ainda não percebi qual é a fonte. Alguém sabe?
Number of Web logs could be overstated: Web log experts admit, however, that there is currently no accurate way to measure the total number of blogs.
Catholics Are ´Blogging´ On the Internet... to Evangelize: "It´s impossible to keep up with them all, but we estimate that there are more than 500,000 Web logs," said Evan Williams, CEO of Pyra Labs, the San Francisco-based company that designed the Blogger Web-based software in the fall of 1999. "There are approximately 1,000 new Web logs created every day," he noted.
Crashing the Blog Party: Though no official statistics exist, unofficial estimates put the number of blogs at 200,000 to 500,000.
Blog bonanza: About 500,000 people have started blogging, according to most estimates.
Blogging for Dollars: Diversity in blogging is good. Conformity in blogging is bad. The last thing we need is 500,000 blogs all written in the same style with the same business model.
Love, Yale, and survival of the Internet: The International Herald Tribune reported this week that three-quarters of the 500,000 accounts created at blogger.com have been abandoned.
Fucked Weblog

CULTURAS IN VITRO
Why Listening Will Never Be the Same: Last Year, for the first time, blank compact discs outsold pre-recorded ones. This statistic has been widely reported in the news media, usually in connection with the fact that sales of pre-recorded CD’s in the U.S. dropped by 10 percent in 2001. To most observers of the music business, all this was further proof that the recording industry is in a state of acute crisis. But nowhere was it suggested that the CD-R (to use the trade name by which blank, recordable CD’s are known) might be anything more than a superior replacement for the now-obsolete audio cassette—much less that its burgeoning popularity is the latest sign of a radical and irreversible change in the way we experience music.
[...] One thing is already clear: hard though it may be to imagine life without records and record stores, it is only a matter of time, and not much time at that, before they disappear. Unlike museums and opera houses, they serve a purpose that technology has rendered obsolete. The triumph of the digit - along with the demise of the record album as culture-shaping art object - is at hand.

Music industry shows a note of desperation: Cheaper CDs
Record company seeking to gum up early releases: Epic Records Group, a unit of Sony Corp., is approaching the sticky problem of prerelease music being traded online with an even stickier solution. Critics receiving review copies of two soon-to-be-released albums - Tori Amos's "Scarlet's Walk" and Pearl Jam's "Riot Act" - are finding the CDs already inside Sony Walkman players that have been glued shut.

Rights issue rocks the music world: Record companies see it as mutiny. Musicians call it an overdue rebellion. Either way, the artists' rights movement has set the stage for combat that could revolutionize the music industry.

Hip-Hop Goes Commercial: On any given week, Billboard's Hot Rap Tracks chart is filled with songs that serve as lyrical consumer reports for what are, or will be, the trendiest alcohol, automobile, and fashion brands.
McDonald's, Intel Pay to Be in Game: The 'Sims' product placement deal with Electronic Arts is a milestone for the video game industry.

Entertainment Sees Dearth of Women Execs:[A]t the top of the leadership positions of 10 entertainment conglomerates, women comprise only 13% of directors on corporate boards and only 14% of the firms' executives.
Locked out of Hollywood’s boys’ club: With more than 90 per cent of its films directed by men, Hollywood is still very much a boys’ club.

Clancy and the overflow: Two books have recently been published with the name of the best-selling author, Tom Clancy, emblazoned on the cover. One is Red Rabbit, the latest in his Jack Ryan series. The other is Mission of Honor, the latest in his Op-Centre series. Both will undoubtedly sell well - Clancy is reported to be the highest-paid author in the world. But the thing is, Clancy wrote only one of these books.

Bribes, threats and naked readings: In a world where more and more new books get less and less attention, authors will do anything to promote their work.

Even pornographers found Lady Chatterley too much

Bath time for Michelangelo's David: The last time Michelangelo's David had a bath Ulysses S. Grant was President of the United States, Queen Victoria ruled Great Britain, Napoleon III died and Jesse James stalked the Wild West. But now, what is probably the most famous statue in the world is to have a seven month-long public wash.

Sticks and Stones and Lemon Cough Drops: From Joseph Beuys to Eva Hesse to Zoe Leonard, many postwar artists make works in unstable or ephemeral materials. Curators and conservators dealing with latex, lard, bodily fluids, and banana peels are coming up with new preservation strategies
Screen Savers: How to preserve an artwork that depends on electronic parts that might be obsolete in a few years? They're working on it

How Mondrian was on right lines and fakes cannot fool the eye: Chris McManus, a psychologist at University College London, took studies by the giant of post impressionism, altered the balance of composition a little with a computer, and tested them on the public. More than half, 55% to 60%, could distinguish the original

Secrets of Digital Creativity Revealed in Miniatures: "Codedoc," an online exhibition of digital artworks that focuses on their underlying computer code, is a daring endeavor. It asks viewers without any programming knowledge to step back from the animated lines and interactive elements of computer art and instead consider the geeky techniques that digital artists use to create those works. This would be like studying the artist's brush and paints and not the painting.

ECO-TERRORES
Stories of Prior Knowledge of Sept. 11 More Than Urban Legend

Virtually Helpless: The Threat of Cyberwar Looms Large. Our Best Homeland Defense May Be Surprisingly Small.
"The concept of 'homeland security' is essentially retarded," says Michael Wilson, a former hacker and current partner in Decision Support Systems Inc., a Reno, Nevada-based consultancy advising sovereign states, companies, and the ultrarich about dealing with cyberwar. "The contracts are going to the very people who got us into this mess to begin with. None of them can tell you what the current cyber-threat is, and they don't know what to defend with."

VITAMEDIAS
www.libel.com: Bloggers beware.
"It's obvious that individuals are unaware of the risks of libel and invasion of privacy, and don't realize that what they're saying on these websites could set themselves up for libel lawsuits from individuals and entities from around the world"

Why your favorite TV shows get zapped: As you sit down to watch the new shows this fall, no doubt you will find yourself wondering about some of your old favorites. Some will have moved, some will be gone altogether, and most aggravating of all to loyal fans, some will be pitted against one another.
"Why?" you might ask, as you mutter: "The old schedules worked just fine for me."

American composers reflect on the state of music criticism in America today
Learning on the Job: Anticipating the New Season, the Critic Reflects on His Role
Much art criticism is adulatory or merely descriptive (some will say I add to this). Many critics have never seen a show they weren't enthusiastic about. There's nothing wrong with being an enthusiast, but enthusiasts can be some of the toughest critics around (Beavis: "This show sucks." Butt-head: "Yeah, it should change"). Future generations will peruse today's art magazines and suppose ours was an age where almost everything that was made was universally admired.

TECNO-HOUSE
The New New Evidence: The smoking gun of the future consists not of fingerprints and gunpowder residue on metal, but of ones and zeroes.
Saving Dying Data

The Coming Virus Armageddon: In addition to being stealthy, experts said, the ultimate computer virus would be polymorphic - able to change its code, message and form to avoid detection.

Issues that will shape the Internet: [1) Freedom to create and innovate. 2) Customer choice and competition policy. 3) Security and liberty.]

New AES crypto standard broken already?

XP Update Is a Failed Attempt at Simplicity
Microsoft's new deal with Uncle Sam: Why does the White House refuse to tell Microsoft to get tough on security?
One explanation for the draft report's marked silence is that there is an unusually close relationship between Microsoft and the White House.

Maid to Order: A little robot called Roomba vacuums your house while you lounge by the pool. Is this the beginning of the end?

CONTAMINANTES
Living Color: Pantone owns the monopoly on every tint, tone, and shade you've ever seen. Now it wants to control the colors you'll see in the future.
Though Pantone doesn't sell inks, dyes, or paints, it has come to hold a monopoly on color. Of course, frequencies of light, like naturally occurring sounds, are free for anyone to use. But Pantone owns their names - or, more specifically, their designated numbers and spectro-photometric descriptions. Ultimately, printers and manufacturers have to translate those numbers into atoms - pigment, dye, or varnish. In order to check that the final product matches the design spec, there needs to be an agreed-upon point of reference. And that's what Pantone sells, to designers of every kind and a thousand ink licensees in 65 countries - a standard reference, in the form of $3,600 cotton-swatch binders, $150 fan decks, and $300 chip books.

More Than Zero [ou porque são más as propostas para a zona do World Trade Center]
The fault lies not with the hapless architects who were asked to dress up this pig of a project, but with the clients themselves, most notably the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. It holds title to the land under the now-vanished structures on which the developer Silverstein holds a ninety-nine-year lease. Loath to stem any of the considerable revenue stream that the WTC poured into its coffers, the Port Authority insisted that the redevelopment schemes replace virtually all thirteen million square feet lost in the Twin Towers' destruction. Given that the bulk of the space had been contained in the megalithic superstructures, it does not take an architecture expert to understand that if you redistribute the same quantity of volume in considerably shorter, safer buildings - deemed prudent by all concerned - then more ground will have to be covered. And because of the considerable - and to my mind justifiable - public pressure to leave the footprints of the towers vacant (a central demand of the missing victims' families and a feature of four of the six LMDC schemes), the gross overcrowding of the site is inevitable.

Are we on top of the world? According to C Northcote Parkinson, the inventor of Parkinson's Law, the final and terminal decline of an institution is often signalled by a move into a gleaming, towering, purpose-built headquarters.

Cloned Food Products Near Reality: Items Could Reach Shelves by 2003

Cow and dog genomes next up: Cows, dogs and a single-celled predator called Oxytricha trifallax are next in line to have their genomes sequenced when the mouse, rat and human projects wrap up within the next year.

.DE!
Speed of light broken with basic lab kit: Electric signals can be transmitted at least four times faster than the speed of light using only basic equipment that would be found in virtually any college science department.

You have been invited to invade Iraq! How the Web can make planning your next war hassle-free and fun for all.
War on Iraq!!

PHOTO-GRAFIAS
Item # 2100456623: Our Christian President-George W. Bush- 9-11

Scientists Hope to Monitor Space Junk Hitting Moon

ZITE
The Sugar Packet Collector's Page

16 setembro 2002

First Smiley Found (fui eu, fui eu...)
First "smiley" shows its face
First ever smiley found, preserved for posterity: The original smiley, or emoticon, invented in 1982 by Scott Fahlman but subsequently lost, has been retrieved through the efforts of Microsoft researcher Mike Jones and facilities staff at Carnegie Mellon University.
The First Smiley :-)
Original Bboard Thread in which :-) was proposed: Here is the original message posted by Scott Fahlman on 19 September, 1982
Nov 1982: Early reference to emoticons [on Usenet]
Smiley Lore :-) (by Scott Fahlman): Yes, I am the inventor of the sideways “smiley face” (sometimes called an “emoticon”) that is commonly used in E-mail, chat, and newsgroup posts. Or at least I’m one of the inventors.

The Man Who Brought a :-) to Your Screen: Fahlman might not have the first claim to the emoticon. A mysterious Netizen named Kevin Mackenzie is often cited for having first typed a -) symbol, meaning "tongue in cheek," back in 1979. "As far as I know I was the first, but nobody can ever be sure," says Fahlman
1979: On April 12, Kevin MacKenzie emails the MsgGroup a suggestion of adding some emotion back into the dry text medium of email, such as -) for indicating a sentence was tongue-in-cheek. Though flamed by many at the time, emoticons became widely used
Smiley faces are said to have been invented by Kevin MacKenzie on April 12, 1979. MacKenzie, a newcomer to the Msg Group (one of the early collaborative partners in ARPAnet development), anguished over the “loss of meaning” in the textually-bound communications mode of email. He says that after reading an old copy of Reader’s Digest, he got the idea that particular email sentences could be punctuated with meaning marks to indicate how they were to be understood: i.e. tongue-in-cheek, with laughter, just-kidding, sarcastically. etc. [taken from Katie Hafner and Mathew Lyon's "Where Wizards Stay Up Late, The Origins of the Internet", 1996, Simon & Schuster.]
Emoticons and Internet Shorthand: In 1979, Kevin McKenzie of the Arpanet's MsgGroup made the following suggestion:
Perhaps we could extend the set of punctuation we use, i.e.: If I wish to indicate that a particular sentence is meant with tongue-in-cheek, I would write it so:
"Of course you know I agree with all the current administration's policies -)."
A Brief History Of Smiley's: The very first emoticon possibly appeared in 1979, first used by someone named Kevin Mackenzie. He is believed to have first used the -) symbol, which meant "tongue in cheek". The technique didn't appear to catch on, and it remained for another to start the fad. Between 1981 and mid-1982, emoticons are believed to have been invented (or at least they took hold of the popular imagination) by Scott Fahlman on the CMU bulletin board system.

First smileys date back to time of Plato, apparently: Brian Dear bounces in with the information that he's writing a book about the Plato system, which originated in 1961, and where smileys were used at least a decade ahead of their 'invention' at CMU.
More prior art comes from (and no, we are not making this up) Ken Smiley, director of Research at Giga Information Group: "With all do respect to Mr. Fahlman who thinks he invented the Smiley face in the world of computers, he is incorrect, in fact he's off by a good 10-15 years. My father, the head of IT for Coca Cola in the midwest region in the 60's and 70's used to print out Smiley faces on both punch tape (60's) and punch cards (70's) to entertain me while I was tagging along with him at the office and 'playing with the computers."

Despair, Inc. Secures Official Trademark Registration for ":-(", Announces Plan to Sue Millions for Trademark Infringement
Alphabetical (by Emoticon) List

CULTURAS IN VITRO
L'art ASCII toujours vert

Barbican festival to woo EU sceptics: The Foreign Office is funding an international film festival to combat ignorance over European Union expansion. The initiative has been prompted by a study which shows three out of four Britons cannot name a single country planning to join the EU in 18 months' time.

The Recording Industry is Trying to Kill the Goose That Lays the Golden Egg: Given the slight dip in CD sales despite so many reasons for there to be a much larger drop, it seems that the effect of downloading, burning, and sharing is one of the few bright lights helping the music industry with their most loyal customers.

ECO-TERRORES
Seven Surprises on the First Anniversary of September 11th (Military superiority does not guarantee national security; Moral clarity does not beget strategic consistency; Will Saddam Hussein become one of the victims of September 11?; New alliances, new frictions; Anti-Americanism as a surprise; Al Qaida, Enron and Worldcom: who did the most economic damage?; Globalization is alive and well)

Une personne meurt de faim dans le monde toutes les quatre secondes
Greens accused of helping Africans starve: U.S. AID Administrator Andrew Natsios accused environmental groups of endangering the lives of millions of famine-threatened Africans by encouraging their governments to reject genetically modified U.S. food aid.

Patently problematic: An important new study shows the promise, and pitfalls, of intellectual-property rights for the poor
Its central message is both clear and controversial: poor places should avoid committing themselves to rich-world systems of IPR protection unless such systems are beneficial to their needs. Nor should rich countries, which professed so much interest in “sustainable development” at the recent summit in Johannesburg, push for anything stronger.
Imitation v inspiration: How poor countries can avoid the wrongs of intellectual-property rights

Third Annual E-Government Study: Governments Improve Web Security but Offer More Restricted Areas
Has Terrorism Curtailed E-Government? Seeking to fortify national defense in the months following the September 11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. government reevaluated its massive presence on the World Wide Web. But a year later, federal government officials aren't clear on what information remains online, what's been taken off, and whether any of it will ever return.

They who must be obeyed: What do Madonna, JK Rowling, Kate Moss and Cherie Booth have in common? According to Cosmopolitan magazine, the singer and actor, the bestselling author of the Harry Potter books, the model and the barrister are among the 100 most powerful women.

Forbes: Kluge, Redstone, Coxes top media billionaires
The rich are getting less rich in America. For the second straight year, the combined worth of Forbes' 400 wealthiest declined. Billionaires John Kluge, Sumner Redstone and the Cox family topped the media entries. The top 10 remained the same, with some reshuffling of the order. The biggest loser on the list released Friday was also the richest person: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. He lost $11 billion for a net worth of $43 billion. Gates now has lost $20 billion since the tech meltdown began in 2000, due largely to the drop in value of his Microsoft shares.

VITAMEDIAS
Why Aren't U.S. Journalists Reporting From Iraq?: The trouble is, the journalists with the guts and means to go in country aren’t doing their job. Maybe they’ll all try to get visas when the bombing begins, and report from the Rasheed Hotel at the point when informing Americans will mean snagging footage of dead civilians - instead of asking Cheney why isn’t he more worried about nukes in Pakistan - where the jihadis are actually in the army and intelligence?
In the filing line: If there is a war in Iraq, what can and cannot be broadcast or written?

What Did He Say? The official White House transcript doesn’t always record the flubs and malapropisms uttered by presidents and their press secretaries. When should stenographers correct the record, and when does cleaning up look like sanitizing?
During an April visit to Connecticut, President Bush inadvertently urged Americans to volunteer for "4,000 years" and misidentified the state's lieutenant governor. But in the official White House transcript, the president encouraged Americans to volunteer for a less ambitious "4,000 hours" and correctly stated the lieutenant governor's last name. The crowd's laughter at his "4,000 years" gaffe was not included, nor were the taunts of hecklers a day earlier in Tennessee.

ISP dream: We can do TV too
Internet companies' newest hope is to model themselves after the business successes of cable TV.
AOL Updates Its Content To Draw Broadband Users:

Digital media world aims to survive by doing less: Microsoft, which last year boasted its first customer for its interactive TV middleware software in Portugal's TVCabo, went on the record saying that it was no longer trying to sell products with all the bells and whistles, because clients could no longer afford expensive set top boxes.
Warning over TV 'red key fatigue': Interactive TV, the technology that gives viewers extra choice and information through remote controls, faces the risk of being stillborn [...] "Red key fatigue", referring to the button viewers press to access interactive TV (iTV), has already set in because many of the current features are not good enough

Watch Out! NYC Taxis Get TVs

Youth powers TV, but is that smart business? If you get 'em while they're young, they'll be yours for life. That's the assumption behind much of TV advertising, a $36 billion industry (according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus) that increasingly caters to 18- to 34-year-old males. Once a Chevy guy, always a Chevy guy, this reasoning goes. [But a] growing number of experts are suggesting that the "get 'em while they're young" premise is an outdated assumption about both the young and the old. First, women, not men, control 85 percent of all personal and household spending, according to recent research. And the over-49 crowd in general has more disposable income than younger people.
TV Viewing Time Linked to Kids' Behavior Problems: Kids who spend more time watching TV - regardless of the content of the programming - are more likely to behave aggressively and have other types of social problems

TECNO-HOUSE
Information Technology Litigation and Software Failure: The costs of failed software or computer related services can be substantial, including lost sales, legal fees, litigation costs, system failure costs, lost management time, lost employee time, incidental expenses, vendor charges for phone support, and damages to the business. When failure occurs, one of the first remedies is often instigating litigation against the vendor or service provider. Unfortunately, using the law as a remedy is widely misunderstood.

Cybersmearing: A Legal Conflict Between Individuals and Corporations (Cybersmearing is the act of anonymous communication of false information about a corporation over the Internet, which causes economic damages.)

Here comes Internet2: The dot-com implosion has left many managers wary of the promised wonders of information technology, but those who ignore the next phase of the Internet--dubbed Internet2--do so at their peril,

Porn outfit bids for Napster: Because the [Private Media Group Inc.] has a track record of legal compliance, owns the largest library of adult content in the world and has strong technological know-how, [...] is "uniquely suited to manage a viable and legal P2P network for consumers of adult content."

Video E-Mail Reviewed
The video-mail era is by no means a sure thing, however. V-mail lacks many of the juicy features that made e-mail a smash hit. For example, you cannot very well search your saved videos for a certain phrase, as you can with e-mail.
Video-Conferencing Hole Exposed: Even a relatively unskilled attacker can transform some video-conferencing systems into video-surveillance units, using the devices to snoop, record or publicly broadcast presumably private video conferences.

Traffic Patterns for August 2002: Nearly 46 million Americans accessed the Web at work during August 2002, representing a 17 percent increase over the same time last year
Firms Can Monitor Internet and E-Mail Activity: From snoopware to nonviral mailware, firms can limit liability by monitoring employees' computer activity

Microsoft warns of thieving Word docs: A security flaw in Microsoft's flagship word processing software could allow a document to hijack files from any Windows PC on which it's opened

One Man's Retro Mac Revival: Simunovich is part of a thriving Mac underground obsessed with retro machines. He, and thousands like him, lovingly maintains Macs that should have been landfill decades ago.

Interactive Linux Kernel Map

Enhanced Thumbnails: a proprietary visualization technique that makes it easier to find relevant content quickly within documents and document collections.

CONTAMINANTES
Dirty Online Campaigning? Saying "the Web is crucial" in today's political campaigns, California Assembly candidate Dan Dow has an official Web site: Dandow.com. But he's also registered the URLs JohnDutra.com, JohnDutra.net and JohnDutra.org. And incumbent Assemblyman John Dutra - Dan Dow's opponent in the upcoming election for California's 20th District - is none too pleased that his name is being used against him in the campaign.

For the record: You have the right to remain silent, but lying's even better
[S]ome years ago, Mike Royko, the late columnist of the Chicago Tribune, urged readers to lie through their teeth to political poll-takers. His goal was to break the pollsters' stranglehold on politicians, and he argued that if political leaders discovered that poll results were unreliable, they'd have to start thinking for themselves. It would also put all pollsters out of work, which would be another plus. [...] But after reading Royko, I adopted his suggestion with gusto. I now tell pollsters the exact opposite of what I think, and if I have no opinion, I make one up. [...] Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do about the databases of official records that governments maintain, but there is something that I - and you - can do about private databases. Don't just skip the optional questions. That's not good enough. Lie.

Txts get teenz 2 take inhalR: Youngsters choose mobile-phone medication reminders.

Proposed Guidelines Would Distinguish a Pain-Free Death From Euthanasia

International Crime Statistics

.DE!
Euros break EU allergy directive: New coins release more than enough nickel to trigger dermatitis.

Four Fort Bragg Soldiers Accused in Wives' Slayings: [T]hree of the men alleged to have killed their wives had returned from duty in Afghanistan.

PHOTO-GRAFIAS
Unpiloted aerial vehicles, like this Predator craft, can be navigated via Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites

ZITE
Don't Be a Stranger