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In the late Fifteenth Century, an Italian in a puffy shirt pitched a business plan. Again and again and again. Until finally somebody bit. What’s remarkable was not that this Italian wore a puffy shirt; it was the style in those days. And there was nothing strange about his pitching his investment ideas at the royal houses of Portugal, or Venice, or his hometown of Genoa. It wasn’t even that odd that he pitched his business plan to the king of England, and finally to the king and queen of Spain. All these monarchs heard investment ideas all the time....

OK, I am not posting this to stir up the FireFox guys and gals. I've used FF for a while, it's OK but I generally surf with IE8. Two things I've noticed: 1 - sometimes when I visit a web page that requires a login, say my bank or webmail, the "focus" is supposed to put the cursor in either my login or password box. Normally Chase bank is pretty good but the last few days I have to click on the login box. My webmail is often lousy, but on days Chase doesn't put the cursor in the box...

PASADENA, Calif. -- A five-year survey of 200,000 galaxies, stretching back seven billion years in cosmic time, has led to one of the best independent confirmations that dark energy is driving our universe apart at accelerating speeds. The survey used data from NASA's space-based Galaxy Evolution Explorer and the Anglo-Australian Telescope on Siding Spring Mountain in Australia. The findings offer new support for the favored theory of how dark energy works -- as a constant force, uniformly affecting the universe and propelling its runaway expansion. They contradict an alternate theory, where gravity, not dark energy, is the force pushing space...

NASA has unveiled a flood of photos showing millions galaxies, stars and asteroids photographed by a prolific sky-mapping telescope that ended its mission earlier this year. For the first time, the space agency publicly released more than half of the 2.7 million images taken by its Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope during its mission to map the entire sky. WISE launched in December 2009 and spent 14 months scanning the heavens in infrared light before shutting down this past February. The $320 million space telescope hunted for asteroids and comets, as well as more distant cosmic objects revealed by...

The Web has changed a lot since Marc Andreessen revolutionized the Internet with the introduction of his Netscape browser in the mid-1990s. That's why he's betting people are ready to try a different Web-surfing technique on a new browser called RockMelt. The browser, available for the first time Monday, is built on the premise that most online activity today revolves around socializing on Facebook, searching on Google, tweeting on Twitter and monitoring a handful of favorite websites. It tries to minimize the need to roam from one website to the next by corralling all vital information and favorite services in...

As Ford takes the wraps off the new 2011 Explorer today – with a stellar, multi-city “throwback” reveal combined with a social media offensive – it’s easy to see why they’re excited about it. The new Explorer is lighter, much better looking, safer, quieter, exhaustively equipped, technically sophisticated, dramatically more efficient and with light-years better driving dynamics thrown-in for good measure. In short, there is nothing about the 2011 version of the Explorer that bears any resemblance to the vehicle that came before it. The only thing the new vehicle shares with the old one is the name, which has...

Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) web browser, now accounts for less than 60% of the market, down from 95% at its peak in 2003, according to new figures. Latest statistics, from measurement firm NetApplications, show that IE has 59.9% of the market, with Firefox gaining on it, with 24.5%.

US' own Hitler Youth- Daily Kos In todays NYT, there is an article about the boy scouts explorer program which takes scouts (boys and girls) between 14 and 18 and trains them in so called law enforcement activities.This proram now has over 35,000 members and semms to be concentrated in the border areas. My immediate reaction on reading the article was to think of the Hitler Youth movement in Germany of the thirties, and to this end I checked into Wiki and compared the two groups.

Swiss-based marine explorer and inventor Jacques Piccard, who was part of the deepest submarine dive in history, has died at his home aged 86. In 1960, Piccard and US co-pilot Don Walsh took a submersible developed by his father to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific. They went 11km (seven miles) beneath the surface of the sea. Their discovery of living organisms at that depth led to a ban on the dumping of nuclear waste in ocean trenches. "By far the most interesting find was the fish that came floating by our porthole," Piccard said afterwards...."

Computer problems. I just assembled a new machine and I cant get the browsers to recognize the coloring for background and text in FireFox or explorer. Standby for sample screen capture

The last week of January contains a number of notable space anniversaries. This year, the most prominent one is the fiftieth anniversary of the first satellite launched by the United States, Explorer I, starting our own nation’s space age. Most of us don’t remember that time, half a century ago, but the nation had been shocked four months earlier when the Soviet Union was the first to launch an object into orbit. Most hadn’t even been aware that there was a space race, but suddenly we were losing it. This was compounded on December 6th, 1957 when, in an attempt...

SACRAMENTO, (AP) -- Ford Motor Co. on Wednesday agreed to settle class-action lawsuits covering plaintiffs in four states who claimed its Explorer sport utility vehicles were prone to rollovers, the company and an attorney for the plaintiffs said. The settlement applies to about 1 million people in California, Connecticut, Illinois and Texas, said Kevin P. Roddy, a New Jersey attorney and co-counsel for the SUV owners who brought the lawsuit. He said the settlement will be filed later Wednesday in Sacramento County Superior Court. It will allow vehicle owners to apply for $500 vouchers to buy new Explorers or $300...

Archaeologists continue debate, search for battle site lost for centuries in Alabama It's out there. Somewhere underneath cat claw briars or mud flats or even modern subdivision tracts, there are shards of Spanish metal, burned clay and a palisaded wall waiting to be found, answering one of the South's famous mysteries: Where is Mauvilla? Historians gleaning descriptions from written accounts of Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto's expedition across the South say the earliest and bloodiest battle between Europeans and Indians happened at Mauvilla, a fortified village that researchers spell a variety of other ways, including Mabila and Mavila. It sat...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- The Supreme Court ordered a state appeals court Monday to review a decision giving $82.6 million to a woman who was paralyzed after her Ford Explorer rolled over. The justices want a California appeals court to determine if its ruling is in line with the Supreme Court decision overturning a $79.5 million punitive damages award in a tobacco case earlier this year. The court said then that a jury may punish a defendant only for the harm done to the person who is suing, not to others whose cases were not before it ....Ford's legal team, led...

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Everest conqueror and Antarctic explorer Sir Edmund Hillary has returned to the frozen continent — at age 87 — for what he believes will be his last time. Hillary joined New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and other dignitaries who flew to Antarctica for the 50th anniversary of the Scott Base, which the adventurer helped build in 1957. "This is probably the last opportunity that I will get to visit the wintery south," Hillary said Friday, the day after he arrived. Hillary helped lead a team to the South Pole in 1955. He was the first...

LONDON - Knowing he was days from death on a tragic trek back from the South Pole in 1912, Capt. Robert Falcon Scott wrote to his wife that "we are in a very tight corner and I have doubts of pulling through." However, he assured Kathleen Scott, he faced his end without regret. "How much better it has been than lounging in comfort at home," Scott wrote in the letter, recovered the year after he and his companions died of cold and starvation. Scott's courage in facing his doom — following the bitter disappointment of losing the race to the...

NASA Images Suggest Water Still Flows in Brief Spurts on Mars 12.06.06    More Images:     + Groundwater May Be Responsible     + New Craters     + Fresh Crater in Arabia Terra NASA photographs have revealed bright new deposits seen in two gullies on Mars that suggest water carried sediment through them sometime during the past seven years. " These observations give the strongest evidence to date that water still flows occasionally on the surface of Mars," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program, Washington. Image right: A new gully deposit in a crater in the Centauri Montes...

TULSA, Okla. (AP) -- The parents of a teenager who died in the crash of a 1995 Ford Explorer Sport have won a $15 million verdict in their federal lawsuit against the automaker. A spokeswoman for Ford said Tuesday the company will appeal the verdict. A federal jury returned the verdict against Ford Motor Co. Monday in a product-liability lawsuit that claimed the vehicle's roof was not strong enough. Tyler Moody, 18, was killed Jan. 7, 2003, when he lost control of the sport utility vehicle while he was passing another vehicle in a no passing zone on a curve,...

Who really sailed the ocean blue in 1492?Spanish scholars are on a mission to demystify Christopher Columbus's life, long shrouded in a veil of mythic heroism. By Lisa Abend and Geoff Pingree | Correspondents of The Christian Science Monitor MADRID – Genovese nobleman or Catalan pirate? Adventurous explorer or greedy tyrant? What if the Italian gentleman who discovered America was in fact a brutal torturer and slave owner? And what if he wasn't even Italian? Schoolchildren may learn about a daring hero who proved the Earth wasn't flat, but because his biography is pocked with holes, Christopher Columbus is a...

"Dad, why does America celebrate Columbus Day?" "Well, Billy, in 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed from Europe to America and founded the very first settlement in the New World. His arrival marks the beginning of America as we know it." "But didn't he discover America by accident, dad?" "Columbus believed the Earth was a sphere. He thought he could reach the Far East by setting off on a westward course. Though he stumbled upon what is now the Bahamas by accident, he was still a great explorer and a great man, Billy." "A great man, dad, or a racist oppressor?" "Pardon...

Microsoft gave its Windows Vista browser a new name on Friday, officially dubbing it Internet Explorer 7+ as a way to set it off from the edition for Windows XP. In an entry on the IE team's blog, group product manager Tony Chor said that the new moniker would denote the Vista-only features in that OS's browser -- protected mode, parental controls, and better network diagnostics -- all of which are missing from the Windows XP version. The two IE editions share the same code base, and except for the three Vista-specific features, are identical. Beta 2 of both...

Kenya orders Italian to stop ruining historic site Posted Mon, 22 May 2006 Nairobi - Kenyan authorities have moved quickly to protect one of the country's historical sites along the Indian Ocean coast by ordering a foreign investor from Italy to immediately stop developing a piece of land where an ancient ruin with historical values stands. The piece of land holds the ruins of an ancient mosque where a prominent Chinese sailor, Zheng Hess, prayed when he visited the historical town of Malindi in 1415.The ruins of Khatiba mosque lie less than a kilometre from the Indian Ocean shores in...

General Motors has won the first round of a consumer lawsuit that could set a precedent for other automakers in similar suits pending in several states. A U.S. District Court judge in Dallas has dismissed a suit in which the owner of a 2004 Chevrolet Tahoe alleged that GM had been negligent in using tempered glass in its side windows rather than laminated glass.

Despite all the hoopla about the introduction of Windows Vista, the truth of the matter is that the new OS isn't due for at least another seven to nine months — and it will probably be even longer before most of us start adopting it. Meanwhile, we've still got to deal with Win XP. In order to make the waiting easier, we've decided to assemble the greatest tips in the history of Windows XP. Here you'll find the tips that give you the most bang for your buck; that are most useful in terms of security, functionality, and PC performance;...

PALOMINAS — The Naco Border Patrol Explorer post added four new members Wednesday with a ceremony at Valley View School honoring the newest graduates of its training class. “You came in as individuals and now you graduate as a team,” Darcy Olmos, Patrol Agent in Charge at the Naco Border Patrol station, told the graduates. The new Explorers are Alexalyn Hardgrave, 15, of Sierra Vista; Sammy Collins, 16, of Sierra Vista; Devin Humphries, 16, of Hereford; and Christopher Tillman, 15, of Sierra Vista. Humphries was honored for having the group’s highest test score average at 91 percent. Hardgrave also was...

Pasadena (California): A U.S. spacecraft that scientists say could revolutionise the understanding of Mars has moved into a ``perfect'' orbit around the Red Planet, NASA said. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the most advanced mission ever sent to another planet, will circle the Red Planet for five years in search of water and life, sending back path-breaking data to Earth. ``This will rewrite the textbooks on Mars,'' said Jim Graf, project manager for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, cheered and applauded as the MRO, packed with an unprecedented high-tech array of...

Hurt by Falling Sales of SUVs, Ford Will Face Plant Closings and Thousands of Job Losses DETROIT (AP) -- Ford Motor Co., hurt by falling sales of sport utility vehicles, is expected to close plants and cut thousands of jobs in North America as part of a restructuring program to be announced Monday. ADVERTISEMENT Ford has refused to release details of the plan, dubbed the "Way Forward," which also is expected to include product changes and cuts to Ford's salaried ranks. Ford has about 87,000 hourly workers and 35,000 salaried workers in North America. "It's going to be painful for...

High expectations for U.S. automakers' new models... GM, its stock price at its lowest level in a generation, the sales pitch that it makes in the coming days will be fraught with risk and high expectations. After the shock of last year's record-high gas prices, the world's biggest automaker was forced to retool its product lineup of trucks and SUVs, belatedly recognizing that many consumers are leaning toward smaller vehicles. With its stock in the tank and its sales showing no sign of turning around, GM will try to breathe life into the ailing SUV segment with its hotly-anticipated GMT900...

Researchers tracked three browsers (MSIE, Firefox, Opera) in 2004 and counted which days they were "known unsafe." Their definition of "known unsafe": a remotely exploitable security vulnerability had been publicly announced and no patch was yet available. MSIE was 98% unsafe. There were only 7 days in 2004 without an unpatched publicly disclosed security hole. Firefox was 15% unsafe. There were 56 days with an unpatched publicly disclosed security hole. 30 of those days were a Mac hole that only affected Mac users. Windows Firefox was 7% unsafe. Opera was 17% unsafe: 65 days. That number is accidentally a little...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Norman Vaughan, a dog handler and driver in Admiral Richard Byrd's 1928 expedition to the South Pole, died Friday just a few days after turning 100 years old. Vaughan died at Providence Alaska Medical Center surrounded by family and friends, said nursing supervisor Martha George. He was well enough Dec. 17 to enjoy a birthday celebration at the hospital attended by more than 100 friends and hospital workers. His actual birthday was Monday. Vaughan's motto was "Dream big and dare to fail." Days before his 89th birthday he and his wife, Carolyn Muegge-Vaughan, returned to Antarctica and...

Before all you anti-MS fanboys attack my setup let me first say I am an ASP/VB web developer for an online company and require IE and MS so save the firefox/mac posts for another day. On to the problem at hand... I got the automatic update last night on my XP pro system and now my IE acts very odd. It seems to open fine but it always opens a new window no matter how I try (ie. type in an addres, using favorites). The original window stays open but it doesnt allow any interaction with it. If I try...

A security researcher in Israel has found a way to steal information from unwitting users of Google's desktop search tool by exploiting an unpatched flaw in Microsoft's ubiquitous Internet Explorer. There is a bug in the way the Web browser processes CSS rules, Matan Gillon wrote in a description of his hack posted on Wednesday. CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is a method for setting common styles across multiple Web pages. The Web design technique is widely used on many sites across the Internet.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The California space laboratory that guided NASA's Mars rover missions has begun laying off workers in anticipation of a budget shift away from planetary expeditions, a spokesman said on Thursday. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena expects to shed 5 percent to 8 percent of its work force of 5,400, or about 300 contractors and employees, spokesman Blaine Baggett said. The JPL saw two missions canceled as a result of the budget realignment by NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin, who plans to spend more money on missions to study Earth from space, Baggett said. "We do...

Microsoft warns of unpatched IE flaw By Dawn Kawamoto, CNET News.com Published on ZDNet News: July 1, 2005, 8:55 AM PT Microsoft has issued a security advisory for Internet Explorer, after a research firm published a working exploit to demonstrate how attackers could take advantage of the flaw. The vulnerability, discovered by SEC Consult, mean that attackers could cause the browser to unexpectedly exit and execute arbitrary code. Versions of IE affected by the flaw include IE 6.0 on Windows 2000 with Service Pack 1, 3 and 4, and on Windows XP with Service Pack 1 and 2. "Microsoft is investigating...

Microsoft will build software for managing identities into Windows in order to beef up security by giving users more control over their personal information, the world's largest software maker said on Tuesday. The ID technology, called "info-cards," will give users more control over their own personal information in order to shop and access services online, said Michael Stephenson, a director in Microsoft's Windows Server division. Microsoft is currently working on a new Internet Explorer Web browser and version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, but Stephenson declined to say whether info-cards would be built into the current Windows XP version or into...

A top Windows architect has left his Redmond home to join the ranks at Google, although it's not clear what his new position will involve. Marc Lucovsky, a 16-year Microsoft veteran, joins a number of high profile developers hired by the search giant, including Mozilla programmers Ben Goodger and Darin Fisher. According to the Microsoft Watch newsletter, Lucovsky voluntarily left his Microsoft position last November. Coming from a post at Digital Equipment Corporation, he was involved in the creation of Windows NT and the Win32 kernel. Most recently, Lucovsky was named chief software architect for the now-defunct Microsoft's .NET My...

A Texas jury has found Ford Motor Co. liable for a rollover accident involving a Ford Explorer in another legal setback for the manufacturer of America's most popular sport utility vehicle. On Tuesday, the jury in Zavala County District Court ordered Ford to pay $31 million in compensatory damages in the case, Ford spokeswoman Kathleen Vokes said.

Many Microsoft Windows users who downloaded the recently released AntiSpyware program from Microsoft, or had it installed through an automatic Windows update, woke up to a surprise. Unintentionally, the heuristics of the software detected Internet Explorer as spyware, and removed the program from their systems. AntiSpywareMicrosoft has pulled the program from its website until the problem can be corrected. Elias Weatherbee, a Microsoft representative, said the program was "only in beta" and that "a fix was forthcoming." "It shows how powerful our AntiSpyware program is," said Weatherbee. "Not only is it able to remove spyware from the system, but also...

Security experts are advising that spyware that targets browsers from the Mozilla Foundation has been spotted--a threat that could worsen as its Firefox browser takes market share from Microsoft. Stu Sjouwerman, the founder of Sunbelt Software, said on Tuesday that the anti-spyware company has discovered what it believes is the first spyware to take aim at surfers using Mozilla browsers. Richard Stiennon, the vice president of threat research at Webroot Software, which also develops anti-spyware tools, said that the malicious software does not target Firefox specifically. "According to my research team, this site does not target Firefox, but it does...

New Browser Trick FoundUses homograph attack to spoof links As members of our Security forum discuss, a new homograph browser trick (see demo page) has been discovered that oddly works in every browser but IE. The trick uses International Domain Name (IDN) character support (using foreign characters that resemble American alphabet letters) to trick your browser into showing fake domain names in hyperlinks and in the address bar. IE doesn't support IDN (though it can via plug-in), so by default isn't vulnerable. More detail in this advisory from the group that discovered it.

Phishers are taking advantage of Microsoft’s new software anti-piracy initiative by launching a wave of phishing e-mails in an attempt to get credit card numbers from Microsoft customers. The rogue e-mails also allow phishers to install spyware and adware on users’ machines. Last month Microsoft said it would not allow users in some countries install software updates online unless they could prove that their Microsoft software was legitimate. Security company Websense said it has received several reports of two new versions of spoofed e-mails that are being used to install spyware/adware onto end-user's machines and steal credit card details. The...

"We're thrilled to be the first broadband service provider to adopt Firefox," Speakeasy chairman and founder Mike Apgar said. "We plan to continually enhance the browser with features that will benefit Speakeasy's home, business and gaming subscribers." Speakeasy, a national broadband Internet service provider (ISP), said it will be the first to distribute a customized version of the Mozilla Foundation's Latest News about Mozilla Foundation Firefox browser to its customers. The development was immediately being called significant because it stands to open up an entirely new distribution channel to help get Firefox into the hands of users. To date, the...

(COMPUTERWORLD) - There has been a lot of buzz in the past few months over the arrival of Firefox, the open-source browser published by The Mozilla Foundation, and how Microsoft's Internet Explorer is starting to lose some of its share of the browser market to this new competitor. Out of the ashes of Netscape, Mozilla has built a solid browser that supports features such as tabbed views, Google for native searches and direct support for RSS feeds. But business users need to think twice about making the switch from Internet Explorer, since Firefox lacks the ability to run Microsoft ActiveX...

I've been using Mozilla's Firefox browser all week, and it's GREAT... and it's FREE! I love it and recommend it highly. My pop-ups, freezing and general computer problems have pretty much disappeared. Mozilla I like having the Yahoo Game Channel up for NFL games. You get the stats, and within seconds, the current play. Just went there and here's the message: "In order to use the new NFL GameChannel, users will need Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher and a Windows operating system. If you do not meet the minimum requirements, you can check out our NFL scoreboard instead." From a...

A number of recent phishing sites blocked by the Netcraft Toolbar community have had a common technique of using JavaScript to create a narrow popup window, which is then placed on top of the Address bar. A fake URL is entered into the popup, using the same default font as the real address bar. The script continually checks the location of the browser window and moves the popup accordingly, ensuring that it is always placed on top of the Address bar, thus obscuring the real URL of the phishing site. The image above illustrates a live phishing site in action....

It could allow an attacker to download malicious content onto vulnerable PCs (IDG NEWS SERVICE) A computer security researcher and an antivirus company are warning Microsoft Corp. customers about an unpatched hole in the company's Internet Explorer Web browser that could allow a remote attacker to bypass security warnings and download malicious content onto vulnerable systems. The warnings came after the hole was identified on the Bugtraq Internet security discussion list by someone using the name "Rafel Ivgi." The hole affects Internet Explorer Version 6.0.0, including the version released with Windows XP Service Pack 2. The vulnerability allows malicious attackers...

Disable Internet Explorer Active X support, turn off the "drag-and-drop" or "copy-and-paste files" option across a domain, or switch to another Web browser unless you want to face a Hack attack on your PC, warns the security firm Secunia. They have discovered three very critical flaws in the IE and have issued security notice on its website. The company has rated the flaw as of a very high risk nature and has said that this is their last warning for people to secure their data. “The flaw affects IE 6, and can enable hackers to run pornographic dialers to be...

Search engine operator Google has blocked ads that attempt to exploit security holes in the Internet Explorer. In the past few days, Google has been displaying context-sensitive ads on the right margin from its program partner AdWords that link to sites with dangerous JavaScript for various search terms such as "Preisvergleich" (price comparison) and "Gebraucht PC" (used PC). If you clicked on one of the links in the Internet Explorer, a JavaScript attempted to install spyware on your system. And the normal list of hits also included a lot of sites with Trojans. This Monday, Google reacted to the problem...

For a market segment Microsoft was said to have won decisively in the mid-1990s, the company spent a lot of time in 2004 putting out fires on the browser front. Like the ghost of the Netscape browser rising to haunt its slayer, Firefox emerged with a vengeance from the Mozilla open-source group, which was founded by Netscape in 1998 and last year spun off by parent company Time Warner. Firefox started off the year a prerelease, name-challenged project by a group that had lost much of its credibility after chronic delays and significant setbacks. But Firefox ended 2004 as a...

Remember those days back in 1995, when Netscape Navigator was synonymous with internet? That was the time when Microsoft’s Internet Explorer entered the market for a head-on collision with the Netscape Navigator. That was Browser War –I. Now the battle was reignited by the fire of FireFox, internet browser of Mozilla. This is the beginning of the Browser War –II. And it appears that this time Microsoft is losing it. Internet Explorer is rapidly losing market share. OneStat.com a company in Amsterdam had conducted a worldwide survey in late November. The survey shows that Internet Explorer's share dropped to less...