May 6, 2003 -- Exactly how a person’s eyes respond to low levels of light is even more crucial than doctors have thought in deciding who is and who isn’t a good candidate to have laser vision correction surgery, according to results announced today at the annual meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology in Ft. Lauderdale. The findings should help doctors choose patients who are likely to fare well with the surgery, and to forego recommending treatment for others.

-----
I'm glad I read this. I have been considering getting this done for a while now.

ScienceDaily News Release: Doctors Focus On Pupil Size For Safety Of Laser Vision Correction:

] The disc -- which will be introduced at the Optical
] Storage 2003 conference in Vancouver, Canada, next week
] -- is the same physical size as a CD or DVD and is
] capable of storing up to 36GB of data. It is one of two
] rewritable disc types that make up the initial AOD format
] proposal, the other being a single-sided disc capable of
] storing 20GB. The AOD format also includes 15GB and 30GB
] read-only disc types.

InfoWorld: Toshiba develops 36GB AOD disc: May 09, 2003: By Martyn Williams: End-user Hardware

] The SFF drives, according to Seagate, will allow storage
] systems vendors to offer the same performance in about 70
] percent less rack space. Six SFF drives will be able to
] fit in a 1U form factor, Seagate says, meaning a 1U
] system can support RAID 5. The SFF drives will also
] consume about 40 percent less power and generate less
] heat than current 3.5-inch units.

Byte and Switch - The Global Site For Storage Networking

] AN 18-year-old was in critical condition after jumping
] from a five-storey building in an apparent imitation of a
] stunt from the television show Jackass.
]
]
] The youth was attempting to jump into a pool from the
] roof of a condominium when he missed, shattering both
] legs, police said.

Some people just have no sense.

NEWS.com.au | Another Jackass copycat injured (May 9, 2003)

For those of my friends and associates who have been asking me questions about how to get started on Memestreams (and for anyone else who finds this of use), here's the QuickStart:

(1) Create a Memestreams account
(2) Create a "Recommend" button on your browser Links bar
(3) Recommend something
(4) Check how it looks by going to your own Memestreams page

Here's more info on each of the above:

(1) Create a Memestreams account by clicking on "Create an Account" on the lefthand toolbar (or go here: http://www.memestreams.net/registration/ )

(2) This is the trickiest part: Add a "Recommend" button to your browser. You do this by dragging the "Recommend" link from the following page to your Links bar. Go to this page, find the "Recommend" hyperlink, click, hold, and drag up to your Links bar to have it automatically make the button for you:
http://www.memestreams.net/documentation.html#bookmarklet

If you don't see a Links bar or have a nonstandard browser, you'll need to read the Help file or ask for help. Email/IM me and I'll walk you through it.

(3) Recommend a link as follows:

(a) Go to a URL that you find of interest (a news story or favorite website)
(b) (optional) Highlight a couple sentences on the page, as some type of reference quote
(c) Click on the new "Recommend" button you have.
(d) A popup box will appear with info already filled in such as your quoted text, the page's URL, title, a category dropdown menu, and a text box. You can add in any additional comments that you want to, and click on "Submit"

(4) That's it! If you want to check how your link showed up, go to your Memestreams page at http://www.memestreams.net/users/YOURACCOUNTNAME to see what it looks like. If you don't like how it looks, you can always click on "Edit" at the bottom of the link, to change it.

After you've recommended a few links, you can start playing with more advanced features such as tweaking categories, reviewing/replying to threads, recommending other people's links, and diddling the "Reputation Agent" to get it to recommend other links to you that you may find interesting. To start though, the above 4 steps should get you up and running!

Let me know if you have any questions,

Elonka :)

Memestreams QuickStart

] Eleven years before that, two cosmonauts overshot their
] touchdown site by 2,000 miles and found themselves deep
] in a forest with hungry wolves. That's when Russian space
] officials decided to pack a sawed-off shotgun aboard
] every spacecraft.

So we've all heard about the 300 mile mistake now. But I couldn't pass up this "low-tech" bit. It should be titled "When technology just isn't good enough, there's always a shotgun".

Returned space crew lucky, others faced wolves

] (Jackson-AP) -- A string of ferocious storms has left 13
] people dead in Tennessee. Authorities in Jackson say ten
] people were killed when a tornado struck Madison County
] early today. Two people are still missing and unaccounted
] for in Madison County so authorities say the death toll
] could continue to rise.

Tornadoes Rip Through Mid-South

] Several 17th-century clay pipes found at the site of
] William Shakespeare's home were used to smoke marijuana,
] a South African anthropologist says. Although he has no
] proof that the Bard was the guy who smoked the pipes, he
] surmises that some of Shakespeare's sonnets and plays
] also lend credence to the possibility that the writer
] smoked marijuana for inspiration.

] Thackeray said his "hobby" developed after he played
] the part of the ghost in Shakespeare's "Hamlet" in
] 1998. That renewed his interest in Shakespeare's work.
] He noticed a reference in Sonnet No. 76 to "invention
] in a noted weed." "Weed" is a slang term for marijuana,
] and "invention" can refer to writing. The same sonnet
] refers to "compounds strange," a known reference to
] drugs. In Sonnet 27, Shakespeare wrote about "a journey
] in my head." Sonnet No. 118 speaks of "to make our
] appetite more keen, with eager compounds we our palate
] urge." Perhaps a reference to marijuana as an appetite
] stimulant, Thackeray wonders.

] Intrigued, Thackeray asked the Shakespeare Birthplace
] Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon to allow South African
] researchers with state-of-the-art equipment to analyze
] 24 pipe fragments. Marijuana degrades over time, but
] eight of the fragments showed signs suggestive of
] marijuana, he said. Two also showed evidence of cocaine.

The pot head thing wouldn't shock me in the least.. However, freebasing cocaine dosen't fit my image of Shakespeare.

Anthropologist says Shakespeare might have smoked marijuana

] A vulnerability identified in a library included in
] Windows XP and Internet Explorer version 4.0 and newer
] can be exploited to cause a DoS (Denial of Service) on
] certain applications.
]
] The vulnerability is caused due to a NULL pointer
] dereference bug in Microsoft Shell Light-Weight Utility
] Library ("shlwapi.dll"). A malicious person can exploit
] the vulnerability by constructing a special HTML
] document, which will crash applications using the
] vulnerable library.
]
] An example was provided in the original advisory:
]

Secunia - Advisories - Microsoft Browser Fall Down Go Boom 5 Line HTML Funfun

] Some days, work is so horrible that Christa Adams must
] leave her desk and take a walk around the building to
] calm down. The horrifying, violent sexual images that pop
] up on her computer screen still unnerve her.
]
] But she is no longer shocked. After all, she went looking
] for those images. It is part of the job when you are a
] porn-tracker.
]
] She is one of about a dozen "verifier technicians" at 8e6
] Technologies, an Orange-based firm that develops software
] for organizations seeking to keep employees or children
] from looking at inappropriate Web sites.
]
] For the most part, the idea of looking at porn on the
] Internet all day - and getting paid for it - brings
] mischievous grins to their faces, though they concede
] that the job is not as exciting as it may seem.

Philadelphia Inquirer | 05/01/2003 | They look at porn all day, so others won't be able to