I missed it – did we get an update on the manned mission to mars?

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An ad I received from Costco today featured the following:

ONE
Next Generation Condoms

Irony, like youth, is wasted on the young.

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Actor Sylvester Stallone at ‘John Rambo’ press conference today. By Carlos Alvarez/Getty Images.

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Last night we told you about Qtrax, a new P2P service aimed at combating illicit P2P by offering a legit service that compensates artists and labels via enforced advertising. In that story we briefly noted that Qtrax didn’t appear to have all of its ducks in a row: the company was saying that it had signed all four major music labels, when it appeared that they hadn’t.  At the time it was rather unclear, however, because Qtrax told both Reuters and Wired that it had the necessary signatures.

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Late last night the LA Times called around to confirm the deal and found that only Universal would say that it was close to a deal. EMI and Warner denied a deal was in place, and Peter Kafka says that Sony BMG has also denied that there was a deal in place. In short, no labels have signed on yet.

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Did you know that the iPhone is doomed to failure? Well, it’s true.

The reason? Well, it seems that just as rock crushes scissors, Microsoft’s plans for Windows Mobile 7 (due in 2009… or sometime thereafter… you know, when they get to it) totally beat the crap out of the 2007 iPhone! Don’t believe the Macalope? Well, it’s right there in black and white, mister. Would “the independent voice of Microsoft customers” lie to you?

It’s amazing how future Microsoft products beat current Apple products time and time again, isn’t it? You’d think Apple would have just given up by now.

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“Als de wetgevende macht verenigd is met de uitvoerende macht in een persoon of in een bestuurlijk lichaam, dan is er geen vrijheid, omdat men moet vrezen dat dezelfde monarch of senaat die tirannieke wetten uitvaardigt ze ook tiranniek zal uitvoeren.

Ook is er geen vrijheid als de rechterlijke macht niet gescheiden is van de wetgevende en uitvoerende macht. Als deze samengaat met wetgevende macht dan wordt de macht over leven en vrijheid van de burgers willekeurig, want de rechter zou wetgever zijn. Als deze samengaat met de uitvoerende macht, dan kan de rechter de macht verwerven van een tiran.

“Alles zou verloren zijn als een en dezelfde man of een lichaam van belangrijke mannen, zij het van de adel of uit het volk, deze drie machten zou uitoefenen. Omdat in een vrije staat iedere mens vrij is, moet het gehele volk de wetgevende macht uitoefenen. Omdat dit in grote staten niet mogelijk is, moet de wetgevende macht door volksvertegenwoordigers uitgeoefend worden. Het grote voordeel van het uitoefenen van de wetgeving door vertegenwoordigers bestaat hierin, dat deze de nodige bekwaamheid hebben om te beraadslagen. Het volk is daartoe in geen geval bekwaam. Hierin ligt juist één van de voornaamste wantoestanden van de democratie.”

We zijn in ieder geval aardig onderweg…

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In January 2006 while visiting Antarctica, we witnessed a most unusual method for orca to dislodge a crabeater seal from an ice floe – they made large waves to wash the seal off the relative safety of the ice. Later the orca put the seal back on the ice and dislodged the seal a second time which suggested strongly they were training their young.

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The wildlife photographer Chris Fellows spends over half of each year waiting off the coast of South Africa to capture the sharks at their grisly work.

More great pictures at the link…

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<DmncAtrny> I will write on a huge cement block “BY ACCEPTING THIS BRICK THROUGH YOUR WINDOW, YOU ACCEPT IT AS IS AND AGREE TO MY DISCLAIMER OF ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, AS WELL AS DISCLAIMERS OF ALL LIABILITY, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL OR INCIDENTAL, THAT MAY ARISE FROM THE INSTALLATION OF THIS BRICK INTO YOUR BUILDING.”
<DmncAtrny> And then hurl it through the window of a Sony officer
<DmncAtrny> and run like hell

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So when the going gets weird, the weird get ad-funded. Even in the short, strange history of digital music, they don’t come weirder than Qtrax, a music service that launched here at Midem in Cannes today. It’s a marriage of two desperate industries – the music business, and the ad-supported web startup. To steal a phrase from Sun’s Scott McNealy, it’s like watching two garbage trucks colliding.

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The Halifax bank is enrolling unsuspecting customers in trials of a new generation of RFID-enabled bank cards, and trying to keep them in the program even if they have mis-givings about the wave and pay technology.

PayWave allows punters to debit their account without having to enter a PIN or sign for goods valued at less than £10.

The RFID-based technology, backed by Visa, is being rolled out by UK banks Barclays and Halifax, as well as others on the continent. Mastercard is backing a similar technology called PayPass.

Halifax is introducing the technology in London to a number of punters, including Reg reader Pete.

Pete, a current account holder at Halifax, was among those issued with a new card. He didn’t want to use the unsolicited technology and his attempts to receive an alternative card, though ultimately successful, proved frustrating.

“I have to input my PIN the very first time I use this ‘Paywave’ card, but after that it is automatically authorised to work for all transactions under £10,” Pete explained. “I put the new card straight in the bin – in fact, I shredded it and put it in several different bins. I don’t want this highly insecure-sounding facility, and I never use a debit card for retail transactions anyway.”

The best quote from the article is by far:

“Major customer education issues still need to be overcome before everyone is happy to use this as a cash-replacement technology, which is what the banks and retailers want,” he said.

He may want to investigate the “customer education issues” that doomed the ChipKnip here in 0031.

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The pdf file obtained by Wikileaks and also released by the political party Piraten, contains two scanned documents relating to activities of the Bavarian police, Ministry of Justice and the Prosecution office in intercepting encrypted data submitted via SSL or Skype via the internet. The first one, presenting a communication on splitting cost between Bavarian police and the prosecutors offices, the second one presenting the related offer for the software by a German company called Digitask.

The technology, in high-level explained in the offer of Digitask, works via a local installation of a malware on the clients computer.

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offer dating September 4th 2007, replies an inquiry by Bavarian officials on the possibility of Skype interception, introduces a basic description of the cryptographic workings of Skype, and concludes that new systems are needed to spy on Skype calls.

It continues to introduce the so-called Skype Capture Unit. In a nutshell: a malware installed on purpose on a target machine, intercepting Skype Voice and Chat. Another feature introduced is a recording proxy, that is not part of the offer, yet would allow for anonymous proxying of recorded information to a target recording station. Access to the recording station is possible via a multimedia streaming client, supposedly offering real-time interception.

Another part of the offer is an interception method for SSL based communication, working on the same principle of establishing a man-in-the-middle attack on the key material on the client machine. According to the offer this method is working for Internet Explorer and Firefox webbrowsers. Digitask also recommends using over-seas proxy servers to cover the tracks of all activities going on.

Windows only, of course.

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You know the old cliché about letting the cat out of the bag? Take Robert Carter’s word for it when he tells you it’s not something you’d want to try at home.

The Fort Worth, Texas, man told TODAY’s Al Roker on Friday about how he learned the hard way last week when he mistakenly picked up the wrong suitcase at the airport. Inside was 10-month-old Gracie Mae, who had curled up in her owner’s suitcase in Florida and ended up going on the ride of her life.

After being tossed in the car, dumped on a baggage belt, X-rayed by the TSA, piled in a cargo hold, flown 1,300 miles from her home in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., dumped on a conveyor belt, taken for a ride on a carousel, and tossed into another car, Gracie Mae wasn’t in the best frame of mind when Carter opened the suitcase at his home.

“She looks cute now, but she was all teeth and fangs at that point,” said Carter, who admitted, “I screamed like a little girl” when Gracie Mae erupted from the suitcase.

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The Levys were left to ponder how a cat could go through airport security and baggage scans and not be discovered.

“I didn’t think it was possible,” Seth Levy said.

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Expectant mother Lorraine Allard learned the devastating news that she was in the advanced stages of liver cancer when she was four months pregnant, according to the Daily Mail.

Allard, of St. Olaves in the U.K., had a choice: Delay treatment to save her baby, or terminate the pregnancy to save herself.

She chose the former, waiting until the fetus was viable before scheduling a Caesarean section.

“If I am going to die, my baby is going to live,” Allard told her husband, Martyn, according to the Mail.

The baby came a week early and Allard, 33, gave birth on Nov. 18 to a healthy but premature boy she named Liam.

Exactly two months later, Allard died. She’d begun chemotherapy

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What I discovered with horror as I looked through the logs was that people using Windows and MacOS were downloading software that was two years old. Mono 1.1.7 (released sometime in May of 2005) was the most popular download.

Only 5% of the Mac downloads were actually getting the latest version, 95% was downloading this two year old version. I don’t have my notes handy for Windows, but they were similarly abysmal [Update: found the notes, they were 95% as well].

Basic Concepts in Science: A List A regularly updated list of blog entries explaining the basics of science and mathematics.

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Yes, I’m aware correlation ≠ causation. The results are awesome regardless of direction of causality.

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Average SAT (with margin of error) for the 100 most popular books on facebook. The vertical axis doesn’t mean anything.

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Companies can fire employees who use marijuana for medical reasons even if California law allows such use because federal law prohibits it, the state’s Supreme Court ruled on Thursday.

“Under California law, an employer may require preemployment drug tests and take illegal drug use into consideration in making employment decisions,” Justice Kathryn Werdegar wrote.

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Doing double fistfuls of (prescribed) Vicodin for your pain, washing it down with vodak, then taking (prescribed) Xanax for your anxiety over your disease, and (prescribed) Prozac for your depression about it, while smoking a couple packs of Marlboros a day is still completely legal, of course.

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Bush, before:

“I believe it is the job of a President to confront problems, not pass them on to future Presidents and future generations.”

Bush, now:

The White House confirmed Wednesday that its new budget next month will not request a full year’s funding for the war in Iraq, leaving the next president and Congress to confront major cost questions soon after taking office in 2009.

Typical.

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Apple claims slightly over 3.7 million iPhones were sold in 2007 – yet AT&T this week revealed it ended the year with “just at or sightly under two million iPhone customers”.

That two million has been boosted somewhat by an estimated 300,000-400,000 sales in Europe, analysts believe.

The discrepancy is that the 3.7 million iPhones Apple says it has sold and the estimated 2.4 million sold by its network partners still leaves 1.3 million of the devices unaccounted for.

That implies that around one in three iPhones are being purchased in order to unlock the device for use on other networks and/or for use with unapproved third party applications.

Judy: Gee Bill, there’s something different about you, and I just can’t put my finger on it. Have you lost weight?
Bill: No.
Judy: You got a new haircut?
Bill: Nope. Try again…
Judy: I give up. What is it, you look so much … younger.
Bill: Here, let me show you…