6 Degrees of Computer Science

A common confusion among high school seniors interested in computers has to do with too many, often similar, options available for pursuit in higher education. What is the difference between Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, and why is neither the same as obtaining a Computer Science degree. Go here and take a look.

Video: RSS in Plain English

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There are two types of Internet users, those that use RSS and those that don't. This video is for the people who could save time using RSS, but don't know where to start.

Yahoo! Sued For Human Rights Violations - Cooperation with Chinese government raises concerns

Human rights organizations have been keeping an eye on Yahoo! for years because of the company s cooperation with countries like China where cyber dissidents are criminals regularly sentenced to long prison terms for their subversive online writing. Back in 2005, Reporters Without Borders was emphasizing the fact that IP address information given to the Chinese government resulted in a ten year sentence for one of these online writers. The exact same situation has happened again but this time the activist group has teamed up with the World Organization for Human Rights USA and the wife of the sentenced dissident in a lawsuit against Yahoo!

University VP of Information Services Uses Patriot Act Against Students

University of Portland VP of Information Services has used the Patriot Act against several students. One student wrote a program to bypass Cisco Clean Access and distributed it to a select few. The programmer was suspended for a year and essentially told he was a terrorist. The VP of IS wasn't even able to recognize the code used. It was C++. How sad...

Read the rest of the article here

Criminal Probe Opened in Pet Food Scare

FDA Says Charges Possible; Tainted Pork Confirmed in Calif

The Food and Drug Administration has opened a criminal investigation in the widening pet food contamination scandal, officials said yesterday, as it was confirmed that tainted pork might have made its way onto human dinner plates in California.

More than 100 hogs that ate contaminated food at a custom slaughterhouse in California's Central Valley were sold to private individuals and to an unnamed licensed facility in Northern California during the past 2 1/2 weeks. The hogs consumed feed that contained rice protein tainted with melamine, the industrial chemical that has sickened and killed dogs and cats around the world.

Read the rest here at the Washington Post.

Apple security patch tackles two dozen Mac OS vulnerabilities

Apple Inc. on Thursday plugged over two dozen security exploits within the client and server versions of its Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther" and Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" operating systems that could potentially expose Mac users to a variety of malicious attacks. A version of the software update for systems running Mac OS X 10.4.9 -- labeled Security Update...



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See All of Your Friend's Online Activity in One Place

With Tabber you can import your contacts from a number of sources (gmail, digg, myspace, yahoo, aim etc) and tie them to additional social sites such as blogs, del.icio.us and photo galleries. You can then view their recent activity on these sites in aggregate or individually.



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Pet food recall widens Today ( Updated April 28th )

Wilbur-Ellis Co. said on Thursday it was voluntarily recalling all lots of a rice protein concentrate its feed division had shipped to pet-food manufacturers.

Wilbur-Ellis said the recall was because of a risk that rice protein concentrate may have been contaminated by melamine, a chemical used to make plastics and fertilizers that can lead to illness or fatalities if consumed.

The announcement is the latest in a widening recall of dog and cat food products across the United States since mid-March. More than 100 brands of pet food have been recalled after reports of cases of pets developing kidney failure.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has received more than 14,000 reports of pet illnesses so far. Officials have confirmed just 16 deaths but believe the actual number could be higher.

Wilbur-Ellis' said it obtained rice protein from a single source in China and shipped it to five U.S. pet-food manufacturers, in Utah, New York, Kansas and two in Missouri.

The company said it had told the FDA on Sunday that a single bag in a recent shipment of rice protein concentrate from its Chinese supplier, Binzhou Futian Biology Technology Co. Ltd., had tested positive for melamine.

Wilbur-Ellis said it separated that bag and quarantined the entire shipment for further testing and no further deliveries of rice protein concentrate had been made since.

The company also said a pet food distributor issued a voluntary recall of its pet food on Monday, believing the source of contamination to be rice protein concentrate supplied by it.

Wilbur-Ellis said it is urging all pet food manufacturers using rice protein concentrate supplied by it to recall any pet food that may be on supermarket shelves.

So Far Pet Foods Manufactured by the following Companies have Recalled Pet Foods.

* Menu Foods

* Del Monte Pet Products

* Hills Pet Nutrition

* Nestlé Purina PetCare Company

* Sunshine Mills, Inc.

* Natural Balance Pet Foods, Inc.

* Wilbur-Ellis Company

* Royal Canin USA (April 19)

* Blue Buffalo Company (April 19)

* SmartPak (April 20)

* Diamond Pet Food ( April 26)

* Chenango Valley Pet Foods ( April 26)

* American Nutrition, Inc (April 26)

* Sierra Pet Products, LLC Issues Nationwide Recall of "Harmony Farms" Canned Dog Foods, "Harmony Farms" Canned Cat Foods and "Harmony Farms" Dog Treats (April 27)



Wilbur-Ellis noted that it obtained rice protein from a single source in China and shipped to a total of five U.S. pet-food manufacturers located in Utah, N.Y., Kansas and two in Missouri.



FDA Website with complete list of Recalled Pet Foods.

FDA Main Pet Food Recall Site

*This Post UPDATED May 2*

Virginia Tech.. Very Sad.. Apathy

As my wife and I have sat and watched the sad news from Virginia Tech the last few days we started thinking about what other students at other colleges thought about all this. We asked our son what they had to say about it in his classes at College here in Kansas and were astounded to hear that it was not discussed in any of his classes ( even Psychology ) Is it Apathy on the part of the students and teachers here? I wonder...

Our thoughts and prayers go out to all the students, professors, and their families at Virginia Tech.

From Virginia Tech

To honor and remember the victims of Monday's tragedy, the university has created the April 16 Memorial Website so individuals may share condolences, thoughts, and prayers.

Using Google as a Proxy (or HOW TO: View MySpace at School)

It's very interesting that Google, a host unlikely to end up on most blacklists, has a couple of tools that can essentially act as a web proxy! I normally wouldn't put this on my Blog except for that fact that my sons College blocks several sites also. In my opinion College students are adults paying for their education and should be treated like adults and should police themselves.



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Menu Foods Expands Recall to More Cat Food

Menu Foods, Inc., a private label manufacturer based in Streetsville, Ontario, Canada, expanded its recall on Tuesday, April 10, to cat food not previously subject to the recall. The varieties of cat food in the United States and Canada now being recalled are included in the list at the bottom of this news release. A complete list of Menu Foods' recalled products, including the new items, can be reviewed at www.menufoods.com.

See FDA site for info

Opera 9.2 released

Finally! 9.2 is launched today. 9.2 is not only an important update with bug fixes and the new Speed Dial functionality, it's also a milestone in spreading Opera to new users around the world: Opera 9.2 for Windows ships with 31 languages.



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Opera's Web browser lets visitors see mini versions of their nine favorite sites at a glance

The latest version of Opera's Web browser lets visitors see mini versions of their nine favorite sites at a glance. Click on any thumbnail to load the full site.

The Speed Dial feature also lets people access the site by typing its corresponding numeral — 1 to 9 — in the address bar.

"Speed Dial is a fresh way to call up the top sites you enjoy throughout the day," Jon von Tetzchner, chief executive of Opera Software ASA, said in a statement. "It's a cool, new way to access those sites."

Users still have the option of typing in the entire Web address or calling up the site using a traditional bookmark.

The feature, available in the 9.2 version of the Opera browser released Wednesday, represents the Norwegian software maker's latest attempt to distinguish itself from more popular rivals like Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox.

Opera's free software is available for the Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems.

Research finds Opera users are most satisfied

When the browser share is factored into the best browser voting, the analysis is even more revealing. The results imply that Opera has the most satisfied user base, followed by Firefox and [Apple’s] Safari,” according to NetApplications.

Read more at Opera Watch.

Navy Boot Camp... Recruit Training Command Great Lakes ( Video )

My daughter Cindy is in Navy Boot Camp at Recruit Training Command Great Lakes right now. Ship 6, Div 924. She graduates May 11, 2007.Go Navy...



Part1






Part2

MySpace blocks Photobucket

Yesterday MySpace made the decision to prevent Photobucket users from posting their videos and remixes to their MySpace pages.

This action by MySpace means that all of the videos and remixes you created will no longer show up on your MySpace profile, blog and comments section. More specifically, if you attempt to add new videos or remixes to your profile, they will be removed.

Read more at the Photobucket Blog.

Facebook named 'Hottest' of the hottest startups

Commenters are nominating the hottest startups of Silicon Valley. We totted up the mentions on both threads. Facebook, the college social network, scores highest; with Admob, the mobile ad network, following up.



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Facebook unveils new site design amid growth surge

Facebook, which has enjoyed explosive growth relative to rival social networking sites since a membership crisis six months ago, is set to unveil new features on Wednesday that mark its progress from a dating site for college kids into a mainstream network tool.

On Wednesday, Facebook is introducing new features designed to simplify how users navigate through individual member profiles to keep tabs on friends and associates. It will offer so-called portal pages that give users a bird's eye view of groups they belong to and of possible groups they might join.

Facebook counts more than 19 million registered users across 47,000 regional, work-related, college or high-school networks. The site's popularity is tied to the control users have over what other members see, which discourages members from cloaking their identify in the anonymity of many sites, so much so that many members post their mobile phone numbers.

You can read the full article here.

Bogus US-Iran War Spam E-Mail

A weekend spam run tried to dupe recipients into downloading the infamous "Storm Trojan" by attaching files that posed as videos of a bogus missile strike by the U.S. against Iran, antivirus vendors said Monday.

The unsolicited e-mail, which arrives with provocative subject lines that include "Missle [sic] Strike: The USA kills more then [sic] 20000 Iranian citizens," "USA Declares War on Iran," and "USA Just Have Started World War III," include attached executable files such as video.exe and readme.exe, said Symantec.

I know that our Spam filter stopped several of these from entering our inboxes over the weekend. :)

Walmart Pulls Tainted Pet Food By Day, Restocks It By Night

"Walmart is recalling tainted pet food during the day, only to restock it again at night. This egregious display of corporate ineptitude was detailed to The News & Observer by Walmart merchandise supervisor, Johnnie Walker..."

This was especially interesting because my son and I were in our local Walmart a few days ago and were told the same thing by a Walmart employee in the pet department.

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Pet food recall... Check these websites.

A lot of people seem to think that it is just one place menufoods.com that they have to check when it comes to the recent pet food recall. That is wrong! It's not just menufoods it is also pet foods manufactured by.

* Menu Foods
* Del Monte Pet Products
* Hill's Pet Nutrition, Inc.
* Nestle Purina PetCare Company
* Sunshine Mills

You can go here to the American Veterinary Medical Association Pet food recall


And also here to the FDA pet food recall list


It seems like the are adding more foods every day so keep checking those websites. By the way our dog ate Alpo, and Oldroy and got sick. We just got him back from the vet and after IV therapy and antibiotics he should be fine.

Comcast Cuts Off Bandwidth Hogs

Customers across the country have been contacted by the telecom giant with a warning to curb excessive bandwidth consumption or risk a one-year service termination. Comcast, however, is refusing to reveal how much bandwidth use is allowed, making it impossible for customers to know if they are in danger of violating Comcast's limit.



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IE7 Trojan on the Loose

If you get a e-mail telling your IE7 Beta 2 is ready for release stop and think a few seconds. IE7 has already been released it is well out of Beta. This trojan is pretty nasty so don’t fall for this one. After all you should be using Firefox or Opera anyway...