That setup would drive the power up to 100 teraflops, or 100 trillion calculations per second, and make Jaguar the fastest machine available for unclassified scientific uses. It would have the processing power of 50,000 personal computers.

Supercomputing in the hollow

Un Fu**** Believable! Maybe in NY, anything is believable...

By KEITH RUSSELL
Staff Writer

A Nashville resident has lost a tax battle with the state of New York that some believe could have wider implications for the growing number of people who work by telecommuting from a home office.

The New York Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that computer programmer Thomas Huckaby owes New York income tax for the entire salary he earned from a New York-based union.

During the two years in question, Huckaby did about 75% of his work out of his home office in Nashville. He would travel to New York to work at the National Organization of Industrial Trade Unions' offices about one fourth of the time. He paid New York state income tax on just 25% of his earnings.
The Court of Appeals decision relied on a New York law that says a worker's income is taxable if he or she chooses to live outside the state, as opposed to if they were transferred to another locale.

''New York has the right to tax 100% of a nonresident employee's income derived from New York sources,'' the court's 4-3 decision said. New York state officials lauded the decision.

Telecommuter must pay N.Y. income tax

From this week's chapter of the WTF dept....

Yamato house industrial corporation in collaboration with TOTO Ltd. corporation will start selling the toilet of the future from April 5th onwards.
Aside from the regular functions, you can also check your health status with 4 parameters:

-glucose level in your urine
-blood pressure
-fat precentage in the body
-weight

Needless to say that all this information can be transferred to your PC.

Intelligent toilets according to TOTO

Ok, maybe sumo was a relevant sport in the day of the Shogun... but apparently it's practitioners are still living in that moment...

TOKYO (Reuters) - A tussle has broken out in Japan's tradition-bound sumo world over the right to wear pants in the ring.

Gargantuan sumo wrestlers generally compete naked but for a "mawashi," an arrangement of wrapped cloth that preserves a bare minimum of modesty.
Sumo's amateur association hit upon the idea of allowing shy youngsters to wear "sumo pants," a more substantial garment similar to cycling shorts, to try to boost the dwindling numbers of children taking up the sport, the daily Yomiuri Shimbun said on Thursday.

"Pubescent kids are not going to want to take part if they don't look cool," Yomiuri quoted one local amateur sumo official as saying.

The sport's professional body, the Nihon Sumo Kyokai, however, has made clear that it will not allow wrestlers in pants to take part in youth tournaments at the venerable national stadium in Tokyo, the paper said.

"The national stadium has its rules and ways of doing things," the paper quoted a Sumo Kyokai spokesman as saying. "We have no intention of allowing children in pants into the ring."

Sumo World Says 'No Thanks' to Pants

I'll try to feign surprise here...

As Mozilla and Microsoft executives argue about which browser - Firefox or Internet Explorer - is more secure, fans of the former have numbers on their side, says a security firm.
By Gregg Keizer

As Mozilla and Microsoft executives argue about which browser -- Firefox or Internet Explorer -- is more secure, fans of the former have numbers on their side, a Belgian security consultancy said this week.

According to Brussels-based ScanIT, users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) were "unsafe" 98 percent of the time during 2004, while Mozilla users -- which would include those using Mozilla and Firefox -- were "unsafe" only 15 percent of last year.
...
IE was vulnerable all but seven days of 2004, or 98 percent of the year. "There was only one period in 2004 when there were no publicly known remote code execution bugs," said ScanIT's report. "Between the 12th and the 19th of October. That means a fully patched Internet Explorer installation was known to be unsafe for 98 percent of 2004."

During 200 days (54 percent of the time), there was a worm or virus on the loose that exploited one of the unpatched IE vulnerabilities. (ScanIT's IE vulnerability timeline can be found here.)

In comparison, Firefox (and the other Mozilla browsers) was vulnerable only 56 days in 2004 (15 percent of the time) during off-and-on stretches starting in May. At no time in 2004 were worms or viruses circulating that exploited one of the unpatched Firefox vulnerabilities.

IE 'Unsafe' 98 Percent Of 2004, Says ScanIT

Funny web animation

Michael Jackson | I never copped a feel

Unbelievable!

Tuesday, March 22, 2005 1:33 p.m. ET

LISBON, Conn. (AP) -- A state trooper was suspended for 15 days without pay after he was recorded on a 911 tape saying "too bad" to a caller seeking help for a man injured in a motorcycle accident.

State police said the dismissive answer by Trooper Robert Peasley did not affect the response time to the accident involving Justin Sawyer, 21, who died of a severe head injury a week after the crash last August. Peasley was suspended on Monday.
Russell Shepard, a friend of Sawyer's, called 911, which was routed to the state police barracks in Montville. When he reported the accident, Peasley said, "Yeah ... too bad," and hung up, according to a tape obtained by WTNH-TV.
...
"I am absolutely outraged every time I hear that `too bad' and then click," said Sawyer's father, Jim Sawyer. "I only know that I would have felt a whole lot more comfortable if I had heard people responding on the end of that 911 call with some heart and caring."

Trooper Suspended for 'Too Bad' 911 Remark

Scott Peterson is now on California`s death row. Peterson was transferred this morning from San Mateo County Jail, to San Quentin State Prison. The convicted murderer wore a bulletproof vest to keep him safe on his way to the prison. Peterson is the 644th person awaiting lethal injection. He was convicted last year of killing his wife Laci and their unborn son. The judge pronounced the death sentence on Peterson yesterday, upholding the jury`s recommendation.

Bulletproof vest to keep him safe? On the way to death row? WTF?!?!?!?

PETERSON MOVED TO SAN QUENTIN DEATH ROW

So much for that plain brown wrapper....

BERLIN (Reuters) - A blow-up sex doll sparked a bomb alert in a German post office after it started to vibrate inside a package awaiting delivery, police said Wednesday.

"Workers were unsettled when it began vibrating and made strange noises," a spokesman for police in the eastern city of Chemnitz said. "They were worried the package might be a bomb."

Officers brought the sender to the scene and discovered the source of alarm was an electrical device inside a life-size female sex doll. The man told police he had wanted to return the doll because it kept turning itself on at the wrong moment.

Order was restored after the sender removed the doll's batteries so the defective product could be returned.

Sex Doll Sparks Bomb Alert at Postoffice

Baretta Walks

VAN NUYS, Calif. — Robert Blake walked out of court a free man Wednesday after a jury acquitted him of the murder of Bonny Lee Bakley, his wife of six months and the mother of his 4-year-old daughter.

The panel also found him not guilty of solicitation of murder, but were unable to reach a verdict on a second solicitation count, which was subsequently dropped.

The 71-year-old actor would have faced life in prison for a first-degree murder conviction.

Blake, the former star of the '70s show "Baretta," closed his eyes and then hugged his defense lawyer, Gerald Schwartzbach. He sat trembling at the defense table before his security ankle bracelet was removed and he left the courtroom.
...
Bakley, a 44-year-old mother of four, was a successful mail-order pornographer who had conned several men. Blake's defense argued that any of her victims could have pulled the trigger.

Actor Robert Blake acquitted of his wife's murder