Wal-Mart pledged Wednesday to cut the energy used by many of its products 25 percent, to force the chain’s suppliers to meet stricter ethical standards and to apply its legendary cost-cutting skills to help other companies deliver health care for their employees.

In a lofty address that at times resembled a campaign speech, the chief executive of Wal-Mart Stores, H. Lee Scott Jr., said that “we live in a time when people are losing confidence in the ability of government to solve problems.” But Wal-Mart, he said, “does not wait for someone else to solve problems.”

He then laid out sweeping plans for the company on several health and environmental issues, and he hinted that even more ambitious goals might be on the horizon. Mr. Scott said, for instance, that Wal-Mart is talking to leaders of the automobile industry about selling electric or hybrid cars — and might even install windmills in its parking lots so customers could recharge their cars with renewable electricity.

Ok I can see WM selling low cost electric cars but what to do when you need repair? WM parts department?

Wal-Mart Chief Offers a Social Manifesto

The phone rings. But no one is there.

Ghost calls have long been a staple of horror movies and urban legends about frightened baby sitters. Ray Bradbury wrote a teleplay about a telephone switch that reached sentience only to start stalking a person.

But the culprit behind what is becoming a common occurrence in some households may have a less than otherworldly explanation. More often than not it is a telemarketer — and one that complies with federal regulation. Indeed, adherence to the rules may be one reason for the ghost calls.

Most fingers point at telemarketers who use a predictive dialer, a device that makes hundreds of calls a minute and uses artificial intelligence to detect when a person actually answers. These are then connected directly to a telemarketer waiting to promote a new low mortgage rate, a political candidate or a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. If no one in the cubicle farm is ready to start pitching, the predictive dialer just hangs up.

Speaking from firsthand experience, it is hard to get all the variables right in
predicting when a person has answered the phone and when you have an answering device, and so on, switching, timing, and other factors are hard to do in software....

Battling Ghost Calls, That Telemarketing Annoyance

A group of Digg users organized a temporary boycott of the site because they felt the new algorithm would leave submissions from some Digg "power users" stuck in the queue.

In an open letter to Digg's executives posted this morning, four of the site's so-called top users Andy Sorcini, David Cohn , Muhammad Saleem and Reg Saddler said that they planned to stop submitting to Digg.

"The alternatives are plenty - now is the time to venture into new territory," the letter said. "Digg is, in part, a game. It always has been - and that is one of the reasons we love it. Unfortunately the rules to the game have never been under the community's full control. The latest change in the algorithm, along with rumors of secret editors, auto-buries, etc., have led us to believe it is time to break ties with Digg.com."

In addition, the group later organized a live podcast where about 125 users discussed the changes and thousands more listened in, according to Saleem.

The latest revolt is the second collective move by Digg users in less than a year. In May, many of the site's users staged an "Internet riot" by continuously posting a software key for cracking the encryption technology used to limit the copying of HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs after Digg management had removed it. The users prompted Digg to relent and allow the key to be posted.

Here we go... Need to kick up recruits for memestreams...

Top Digg Users Revolt Against Algorithm Change on Site

he 5-2 decision upheld the job termination of Gary Ross, who flunked a company drug test shortly after being hired at a telecommunications firm.

A state referendum that allows people to use medical marijuana with a physician's recommendation are immune from some state criminal drug possession charges. But the state high court said such legal protection only goes so far.

"Nothing in the text or history of the Compassionate Use Act suggests the voters intended the measure to address the respective rights and duties of employers and employees," wrote Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar. "Under California law, an employer may require pre-employment drug tests, and take illegal drug use into consideration in making employment decisions."

And that I think is the way it should be... hell make it leagl, just dont do it at work ... you cant go to work drunk ...

Court: Medically legal or not, smoke pot and face firing

A White House plan to broaden the National Security Agency’s wiretapping powers won a key procedural victory in the Senate on Thursday, as backers defeated a more restrictive plan by Senate Democrats that would have imposed more court oversight on government spying.

The vote moves the Bush administration a step closer toward the twin goals it has pursued for months: strengthening the N.S.A.’s ability to eavesdrop without court approval, while securing legal immunity for the phone companies that have helped the agency in its wiretapping operations.

At the same time, the White House agreed Thursday after months of resistance to give members of the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees access to internal documents on the N.S.A.’s wiretapping program and the legal foundation for it.

That access could ultimately help persuade skeptical lawmakers in the House, which so far has rejected the immunity idea, to sign on to the White House’s plan.

“I have pushed for eight months to review this material,” said Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. “I don’t know why the White House refused to give us access. Now we will be able to view documents used to set up the president’s warrantless wiretapping program.”

As the Senate opened debate on the security agency issue, it agreed by a convincing vote of 60-to-36 to set aside a bill passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee that would have given a secret intelligence court a greater role in overseeing wiretaps on terrorism and espionage suspects. The defeated measure, while imposing more judicial restrictions, omitted immunity for the phone carriers that aided the agency in its wiretapping operations.

The Senate will instead consider a measure passed by the Senate Intelligence Committee that has the backing of the White House. It would give legal immunity to AT&T and the other phone companies against some 40 lawsuits growing out of their alleged roles in eavesdropping. It would also give the N.S.A. a freer hand to eavesdrop on foreign-based communications without judicial checks.

After the more restrictive measure was defeated, Caroline Fredrickson, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington office, said, “It appears the Senate is buckling under pressure from the White House.”

A final vote on the N.S.A. issue is not likely to come until next week. The Senate is trying to beat a Feb. 1 deadline for amending the wiretapping law. That is when a temporary six-month authorization approved last August expires.

Here we go giving more and more away to fear a mongering asshole...

In Senate, a White House Victory on Eavesdropping

Taking a significant step toward the creation of synthetic forms of life, researchers reported Thursday that they had manufactured the entire genome of a bacterium by stitching together its chemical components.

Scientists had previously constructed the complete DNA of viruses, but this is the first time it has been done for bacteria, which are far more complex. The genome is more than 10 times as long as the longest piece of DNA ever synthesized.

The feat is a watershed for the emerging field called synthetic biology, which involves the design of organisms to perform particular tasks, like making biofuels. Synthetic biologists envision being able to design an organism on a computer, press the “print” button to have the necessary DNA made and then put that DNA into a cell to produce a custom-made creature.

“What we are doing with the synthetic chromosome is going to be the design process of the future,” said J. Craig Venter, the boundary-pushing gene scientist.

Dr. Venter assembled the team that made the bacterial genome as part of his well-publicized quest to create the first synthetic organism. The work was published online Thursday by the journal Science.

Researchers Take Step Toward Synthetic Life

According to a press release issued earlier this month by Finjan, a security research firm, compromised Web servers are infecting thousands of visitors daily with malware that turns their Windows machines into unwitting bots to do the bidding of an as yet unidentified criminal organization. Security firms ScanSafe and SecureWorks have since added their own takes on the situation, though with varying estimates on the number of sites affected. All reports thus far say the compromised servers are running Linux and Apache.

According to an article on ServerTune.com, the exploit involves a rootkit installed on the compromised server that replaces several system binaries with infected versions. When the system is booted, the infected binaries are executed, and as a result, dynamically created JavaScript payloads are randomly and intermittently served to site visitors. The malware JavaScript attempts to exploit vulnerabilites in Windows, QuickTime, and Yahoo! Messenger on the visitor's machine in order to infect them.

We asked the Apache Software Foundation if it had any advice on how to detect the rootkit or cleanse a server when it's found. According to Mark Cox of the Apache security team, "Whilst details are thin as to how the attackers gained root access to the compromised servers, we currently have no evidence that this is due to an unfixed vulnerability in the Apache HTTP Server."

We sent a similar query to Red Hat, the largest vendor of Linux, but all its security team could tell us was that "At this point in time we have not had access to any affected machines and therefore cannot give guidance on which tools would reliably detect the rootkit."

cPanel, a popular administration tool used by hosting companies that allows clients to manage their hosted sites, has posted a security note describing what the rootkit does after it's installed, and suggests two ways to check a server for the rootkit.

According to cPanel, if you are unable to create a directory name beginning with a numeral -- as in mkdir 1 -- you're infected. Another test is to monitor the packets from the server with the following tcpdump command:

tcpdump -nAs 2048 src port 80 | grep "[a-zA-Z]\{5\}\.js'"

One great unknown thus far is how the servers come to be infected. Absent any forensic evidence of break-ins, the current thinking is that the malware authors gained access to the servers using stolen root passwords. The earliest known victims, according to quotes by researchers in this ComputerWorld story, were sites run by large hosting companies, which could give attackers root access to hundreds or even thousands of Web sites when compromised.

Other than using and safeguarding secure root passwords, not much can be done at this time to be proactive in preventing servers from being compromised, so searching techniques similar to the tcpdump command above, which check to see if a server has already been compromised, is probably the best course of action available to administrators. We haven't found a good answer yet for disinfecting compromised servers, but a complete reinstall of Linux, Apache, and a new root password would certainly do the trick.

Mystery infestation strikes Linux/Apache Web sites

Nashville Predators Family Four Pack
Starts at only $99

All packages include

* 4 tickets
* 4 food vouchers good for a jumbo hot dog and a soft drink (4 food passes @ $4.50, 4 drink tickets @ $3.25 = $31)
* 4 ice skating passes at Centennial Sports Plex (4 @ $6 = $24)

The Shoot Twice Mezzanine, a value of up to $235.00
OR Upgrade to the Club Level for ONLY $122.00, a value of up to $395.00

Great deal for the group!

Nashville Predators Family 4-Pack

He's back... And he's mildly upset.

This is funny... might be NSFW due to lang...

:P

Everyday Normal Guy

1963 International Firetruck Brewery
Sold for: $16,000

Classic fire engines in good condition are generally very collectible. In this case, someone got a fire engine and a steady supply of fresh draft beer at a bargain price.

Working in conjunction with brewmasters from Coors and Stone Brewing Co., West Coast Choppers turned this 1963 International Fire Truck into a mobile brewery.

Hoses, reels and storage lockers were removed from the truck to make room for the brewing system's tanks, tubes, heaters and coolers. The frame was also reinforced and a new floor added.

Hell Yea! Beeer! On the go? hmm sounds like a moving DUI...

1963 International Firetruck Brewery