LATE last year, a 15-year-old boy rubbed a swab along the inside of his cheek, popped it into a vial and sent it off to an online genealogy DNA-testing service. But unlike most people who contact the service, he was not interested in sketching the far reaches of his family tree. His mother had conceived using donor sperm and he wanted to track down his genetic father.

That the boy succeeded using only the DNA test, genealogical records and some internet searches has huge implications for the hundreds of thousands of people who were conceived using donor sperm. With the explosion of information about genetic inheritance, any man who has donated sperm could potentially be found by his biological offspring. Absent and unknown fathers will also become easier to trace.

New Scientist News - Anonymous sperm donor traced on internet

bucy wrote:

I thought that something like 80% of households got TV from somewhere other than terrestrial broadcast anyway. If that figure is in fact accurate, it almost makes me want to say "to hell with terrestrial broadcast and spend the $3B to subsidize cable or DSS for the few people that don't have it already." It seems like a huge waste of resources to convert all those transmitters to digital when most people will never tune in the signal in the first place.

Observations:
* 20% of 100m is still 20 million people. 3 billion / 20 million is $150/terrestrial user. And 100m is a conservative figure. That reduces the cost of a one-time converter, but not a long-term subscription.
* Lobbying parties. Do you really think this is just a fight between Broadcasters and the Government? I'm sure there are not any parties interested in encouraging the goverment to force modernization upgrades on millions of pieces of equipment, and million dollar equipment.
* Government power structures: The FCC loses significant clout if broadcast television goes away. The national infrustructure loses another pathway of the Emergency Broadcast System.
* Constituents: The poor are inconvenienced. Especially so for the rural poor.
* Broadcast money: Just follow the money. If it were more profitable for ABC to be a content-based cable&satellite-only network, like its' sister ESPN, don't you think the corporate overlords would have pulled that trigger? Even more so, local news and local programming -- still matters. Still make $$$.

Radio stations, despite being a declining industry that knows its days are numbered, is still big business. A housemate just started work for one as an ad exec, so I've gotten a better picture. I would imagine the same is true of television broadcasting. The dissent about this kind of action is not "you'll put us out of business", it is "you're hurting our profits".

RE: Senate Sets 2009 Digital TV Deadline - Yahoo! News

This one seems more like a simple prank or just bad data getting submitted somewhere. On Yahoo if you type in a business address, it will show the name of the business.

So what happens if you type in Google’s address?

Dangers of trusting your own local, unvetted data over vetted sources. In this case, Yahoo! Maps identified the Googleplex as a fish store, because someone -- likely a Googler -- opened a Yahoo! Shop with that address. And while therefore that is a valid identifier for the address, it is unlikely to be the primary.

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO » More Yahoo strangeness

HOUSTON - A death row inmate escaped from a county jail after he obtained civilian clothing and a fake ID badge, authorities said.

A man with nothing to lose.

Texas Death Row Inmate Escapes From Jail - Yahoo! News

The Senate moved the digital TV transition one step closer to reality on Thursday, setting a firm date for television broadcasters to switch to all-digital transmissions.

They're going to make it happen, market be damned.

There are a couple of interesting levers being used here.

First, they regulate the broadcasters. Fine. They've been talking about this for many years, it is no surprise and has enough good interests for society that why not. The social interest is the reason why this won't "just happen", in a timely fashion, without legislation.

Broadcasters are not going to be happy, though, until their market is there too. That's the issue.

In this legislation, they are allocating $1-3B subsidies for analog-to-digital converters for existing sets. They also set fixed dates by which all televisions of a certain size have to be digital-ready (25-34" -- 4 months, 1 March 2006; up to 24" -- 16 months, 1 March 2007).

Fine. But my initial reaction from the blurb as the article loaded, is that they should just tax analog televisions out of viability -- +$50 for an analog set, -$50 for a digital-ready gets a $100 advantage; alternatively, subsidize converters (as they are) while paying for it through analog TV tax. It hurts the poor, but so does forced upgrades to their reception technology. Give them a rebate option -- like a discounted converter.

The question, really, is whether to lever the market to upset the balance on digital versus analog or to just ban the analog. I think we're seeing the effects of the first as the cost of recycling gets computed into CRTs versus LCDs. That debate has a difference social good basis, but a similar movement and a similar outcome. Except that adoption of LCDs is faster than HD-TV, I believe.

Senate Sets 2009 Digital TV Deadline - Yahoo! News

Willkommen in der Galerie der AIDS-Hilfe Frankfurt!

Kampagne_2005: In the US, there would be riots.

AIDS-Hilfe Frankfurt e.V. | Galerie | Startseite | 1 von 1 | welcome.jpg

"There's a chance you might be bisexual, but as you pointed out, it's more likely that you're just a nerd." — A reply on the kind of awesome advice site Am-I-Gay.com.

Nerve.com - Scanner by Ada Calhoun

MPAA is Suing a Grandfather

What the kid did was wrong, but suing a grandfather for $4,000 is a PR nightmare. Didn't they learn from the mistakes of the RIAA?

Hacking NetFlix : MPAA is Suing a Grandfather

People leaping upon strangers in public and on the Internet, delivering instant backrubs should definitely be stopped before it gets out of hand. (Sorry.)

An extended riff on the Instant Massage typo

loose wire: The Secret Behind Google's Success: The Instant Massage

Between 23-37% of US wireless subscribers will use a wireless phone as their primary telephone by 2009, up from 9.4% at present, according to a recent report by In-Stat. Mobile wireless services have quickly become a viable alternative to traditional landline service for a large number of consumers in the US, said In-Stat. With wireline-to-wireless number portability introduced as part of the Wireless Local Number Portability (WLNP) mandate in November 2003, consumers now have an unprecedented degree of flexibility and convenience in cutting the cord on their landlines, the research firm stated.

The only time I've had a problem with the lifestyle was activating my Tivo.

BlackBerry Cool � Landlines Losing Users