Archive for World
03.07.07
Posted in Healthcare, World at 3:28 pm by stark
For those of you out there who visit McDonald’s restaurants and always feel like the burgers just don’t cut it, you may soon have an option to satisfy your cravings. This new burger, nick named the third pounder, is currently available at 600 restaurants in California and weighs in at 1/3 of a pound instead of the previously dominating 1/4 pounder.
“The initial reaction has been overwhelmingly positive,” said Frisbie, who helped conduct the initial tests of the burger during the past four months at two of his family’s 17 franchises in the Anaheim area. “The sales really surprised us”
This is an interesting move by the monster fast food chain due to recent controversy over McDonald’s contributions to the huge US obesity problem. Nevertheless, it appears there is a market for the new burger, and perhaps it will soon be available at a golden arches near you.
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03.05.07
Posted in Technology, Environment, World at 3:22 pm by bobbyjoe
Ever wonder what happens to that old PC you put in your trash on garbage day? Well it probably ends up in your local municipal land fill allong with over 80% of the estimated 133,000 PC’s discarded each day in the United States. In addition to PCs the bulk of nearly 2 million tons of our e-waste comes from TVs. “The computer industry is ramping up its campaign against electronic waste, a dangerous byproduct of technology’s relentless expansion.”
ROSEVILLE, California (AP) — This is where computers go to die a green death.
Inside Hewlett-Packard Co.’s cavernous recycling plant in the Sacramento suburbs, truckloads of obsolete PCs, servers and printers collected from consumers and businesses nationwide are cracked open by goggled workers who pull out batteries, circuit boards and other potentially hazardous components.
The electronic carcasses are fed into a massive machine that noisily shreds them into tiny pieces and mechanically sorts the fragments into piles of steel, aluminum, plastic and precious metals. Those scraps are sent to smelting plants, mostly in the Sacramento area, where they are melted down for reuse.
Discarded computers, TVs, radios, batteries, cell phones, and other gadgets contain a stew of toxic metals and chemicals.
Computers are cracked open by workers who pull out batteries, circuit boards and other potentially hazardous components.
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02.19.07
Posted in World at 3:17 pm by stark
In an attempt to help track down parents who walk out on their families, the government of Ontario, Canada, has launched a new website designed to enlist the public’s help in tracking down dead beat parents. Good Parents Pay is very similar to the FBI most wanted list, except in this case it displays the 20-25 most wanted dead beat fathers and mothers who are still at large. From the article
“Good parents pay child support. For those who don’t, we want to make things very clear: we will find you and we will make sure your children get the support they deserve,” said Minister of Community and Social Services Madeleine Meilleur in a news release Monday.
Each profile on the site features a parents name, physical description, last known location, occupation, and of course a headshot photograph. Readers of the site can submit tips anonymously in an effort to help track down the offenders. Currently, the Ontario Family Responsibility Office has more than 180,000 active cases of deadbeat parents which totals more than $1 billion in owing child support.
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02.15.07
Posted in Technology, World, World News at 7:34 pm by stark
It seems like every few months an article comes out highlighting the U.S. failure to keep up in the global broadband race. While the same excuses continue to be made for why the problem is happening (country size, lack of need, greedy corporations, to much legacy infrastructure), the fact of the matter is the U.S. is no longer in the top 10 broadband accessible countries and every day falls farther and farther off the pace for new technology to the average consumer. Countries like Korea, The UK, and Japan continue to expand their user base while pushing the limits on technology while the U.S. companies fall farther and farther behind. As this becomes more and more of an issue, the U.S. may find itself unable to compete in the new Web 3.0 or Web 4.0 worlds. Let’s hope the big telecom’s have their wake up call someday soon before it’s too late.
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Posted in Technology, World, World News, Politics at 7:21 pm by stark
A coalition of U.S. software, music, and movie producers has urged the Bush administration to add Canada to the countries blacklist of intellectual property villains. The list is currently populated with countries such as China, Russia, and Belize. Citing Canada’s so-called chronic failure to modernize its copyright regime, the group contends that Canada has developed into an international hub for bootleg movies, software, and video game piracy.
While on one hand, this may seem like a stern warning from the U.S. to their largest trading partner, in reality it is clearly bulling tactics from a country who already feels its dated copyright laws losing ground around the world. Dr. Michael Geist, Canadian Research Chair of Internet and E-Commerce Law, points out that Canadians should not be fooled into thinking their laws are failing in any way to meet some kind of standard. In fact, the U.S. list includes blacklist recommendations for 23 of the world’s 30 most populous countries including Japan, Sweden, Italy, Spain, India, and Switzerland, to name a few. Dr. Geist even points out that this is merely an attempt by the U.S. to enforce a global agenda because it sees it’s own agenda failing both locally and abroad. If the international community is all on the same page, which is not the same one as the U.S., which country really deserves the blacklisting?
Personally, as a Canadian citizen, I am very disappointed in the Globe and Mail article. I expect more from my country and its media resources, and I expect them not to be mere puppets to another countries whims. Their article was very poor, to say the least, failing to mention any of the other large countries also indicated for blacklisting, and instead skewing the article to instill fear in our population. I think they need to step back a bit and look at the country they live in, not the one they apparently wish they did.
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02.11.07
Posted in Technology, World, Politics at 3:51 pm by stark
What do you do if your country is attacked on multiple fronts simultaneously, from a foreign or domestic group, where it’s very difficult to pinpoint exactly where it is originating from? This is the question the US Government and the National Cyber Response Coordination Group (NCRCG) is asking itself as it currently develops an official game plan for response to a cyber attack. Options currently under consideration include everything from launching a counter cyber attack to locating and bombing (KABOOM bombing not Google bombing) the source of the attack. While there is currently no official plan in place, the US Government is clearly taking this threat very seriously. Last November the Air Force added a Cyber Command group whose responsibilities include missions fought in Cyberspace.
“The preferred route would be warning the source to shut down the attack before a military response. If the United States found itself under a major cyberattack aimed at undermining the nations critical information infrastructure, the Department of Defense is prepared, based on the authority of the president, to launch a cyber counterattack or an actual bombing of an attack source.”
While it never hurts to prepare for something like this, I wonder if in all this planning they are considering the fact that these type of attacks can occur within the US borders and could originate from the basement of some house in a suburban neighborhood. In such a case, is the plan still to MOAB everything?
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02.08.07
Posted in Technology, World, Business at 10:30 am by bobbyjoe
Investors, founders, and several employees at YouTube are very happy today with the announed payouts from Google. Back in October, 2006 Google agreed to purchase YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock. “YouTube’s three founders and Sequoia Capital, its main financial backer, received the biggest windfalls.”
- Chad Hurley, YouTube’s chief executive, was paid in Google shares with a current indicated value of more than $345 million. He received 694,087 shares and an additional 41,232 in a trust.
- Another founder, Steven Chen, received 625,366 shares and another 68,721 in a trust, for more than $326 million. Jarwed Karim, the third co-founder, received 137,443 Google shares, with an indicated value of $64.6 million.
- Sequoia Capital, the sole venture capital backer of YouTube, received 941,027, valued at about $442 million.
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02.07.07
Posted in Science, General Science, World at 8:32 pm by stark
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has recently confirmed a diagnosis of mad cow disease (aka Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) in a mature bull from the province of Alberta.
The animal’s carcass is under CFIA control for BSE, and no part of it entered the human food or animal feed systems, the agency said in a release Wednesday.
In recent years, Canadian animals have been found with eight other confirmed cases of BSE, which includes five in 2006 which prompted a temporary ban on beef trade with the United States. Three cases of BSE have also been previously been reported in the USA.
It is important to note that this case was found as a result of the strict safeguards put in place to prevent spread of the disease. Canada has over 13 million cows and calves, and over 40% of them are in the province of Alberta. One isolated case, such as this, is nothing to panic over. The exact findings of the case are under review and will be made available to the public once their analysis is complete.
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For those of you out there who visit McDonald’s restaurants and always feel like the burgers just don’t cut it, you may soon have an option to satisfy your cravings. This new burger, nick named the third pounder, is currently available at 600 restaurants in California and weighs in at 1/3 of a pound instead of the previously dominating 1/4 pounder. 
