gyrogeerloose writes "According to a National Geographic News story, what may be the fossilized wing bone of an ancient parrot has been dubbed by its discoverers 'The Danish Blue' in honor of the famous Dead Parrot Sketch. If the 54 million year old bone did in fact belong to a parrot, it would be 'the oldest and most northerly remains of a parrot ever discovered.' There is some dispute among paleontologists about whether the bone was indeed that of a parrot. If it turns out to be so, however, it never had a chance to pine for the fjords — they were not carved out until an ice age millions of years after the bird lived."

Geoffrey.landis writes "The Massachusetts Department of Industrial Accidents fired worker Michael Fiola and initiated procedures to prosecute him for child pornography when they determined that internet temporary files on his laptop computer contained child porn. According to Fiola, 'My boss called me into his office at 9 a.m. The director of the Department of Industrial Accidents, my immediate supervisor, and the personnel director were there. They handed me a letter and said, "You are being fired for a violation of the computer usage policy. You have pornography on your computer. You're fired. Clean out your desk. Let's go."' Fiola said, 'They wouldn't talk to me. They said, "We've been advised by our attorney not to talk to you."' However, prosecutors dropped the case when a state investigation of his computer determined there was insufficient evidence to prove he had downloaded the files. Computer forensic analyst Tami Loehrs, who spent a month dissecting the computer for the defense, explained in a 30-page report that the laptop was running corrupted virus-protection software, and Fiola was hit by spammers and crackers bombarding its memory with images of incest and pre-teen porn not visible to the naked eye. The virus protection and software update functions on the laptop had been disabled, and apparently the laptop was 'crippled' by malware. According to Loehrs, 'When they gave him this laptop, it had belonged to another user, and they changed the user name for him, but forgot to change the SMS user name, so SMS was trying to connect to a user that no longer existed ... It was set up to do all of its security updates via the server, and none of that was happening because he was out in the field.' A malware script on the machine surfed foreign sites at a rate of up to 40 per minute whenever the machine was within range of a wireless site."

Gheorghe Dobrescu has to be the most unpopular man in Romania. He recently lost a mayoral race to a dead opponent. A supporter of the dead guy said, "I know he died, but I don't want change." Election authorities gave the post to Dobrescu in the end but some villagers have called for a new election. The dead mayor said that he was willing to forego his usual salary in lieu of fresh brains.

snydeq writes "InfoWorld has put together an in-depth, hands-on feature detailing the complete pimp-out makeover of Hawaii Institute of Geophysics' 1950s-era server room into a bona-fide 21st century datacenter equipped with 'some of the glitziest and most functional gear known to datacenter-building man.' The project — completed neither on time nor on budget — resulted in improved rack and cable management, more efficient cooling, higher security, and a wealth of remote management functionality to keep University of Hawaii IT staff from having to leave the beach to service glitches. Editorial coverage includes essential tips for completing a datacenter overhaul, video interviews, and deep-dive coverage of the technologies implemented, including state-of-the-art datacenter-planning software, power and cooling equipment, out-of-band management systems, physical security solutions, remote rebooting capabilities, and more."

You asked Larry Meistrich, head of NEHST Studios, how to get into the movie business. And he has answered your questions. So read his answers, then get off your lazy behind, pick up that digital cinema camera, and go to work!

Dusty101 writes "Special effects maestro Stan Winston has died at the age of 62. Winston was responsible for many of the physical special effects in films such as The Terminator, Jurassic Park, Edward Scissorhands, and Iron Man. Winston died on Sunday, June 15, 2008, after a seven-year struggle with multiple myeloma."

Stanislav_J writes "In a bizarre revelation, the judge who is presiding over the Isaacs obscenity trial in Los Angeles was found to have sexually explicit material on a publicly-accessible website. Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, acknowledged that he had posted the materials, but says he believed the site to be for personal storage only, and not accessible to the public (though he does acknowledge sharing some of the material with friends). The files included images of masturbation, public sex, contortionist sex, a transsexual striptease, a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows, and a video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal. The latter two are especially ironic in that the trial involves the distribution of allegedly obscene sexual fetish videos depicting bestiality, among other things, by Ira Isaacs, an L.A. filmmaker."

coondoggie writes "Google largely conquered the Earth — now it is taking aim at space. At least co-founder Sergei Brin is. Brin today said he put down $5 million toward a flight to the International Space Station in 2011. Brin's space travel will be brokered by Space Adventures, the space outfit that sent billionaire software developer Charles Simonyi to the station in 2007. Computer game developer (and son of a former NASA astronaut) Richard Garriott is currently planning a mission to the ISS in October 2008. Garriott is paying at least $30 million to launch toward the space station aboard a Russian Soyuz spaceship according to Space Adventures." Make sure to wave when you are over Michigan, man. I'll be the one on my lawn, green with envy.

bjcarne writes in to commend Jon Ramvi and his team, who have delivered their first stable release of Ubuntu Eee, an Ubuntu version customized for the Asus Eee PC. "In December Ubuntu Eee started as a one man project, but [over] the last months several people have joined in on the development. We're trying to achieve something which [hasn't] been successful for any other Linux distribution yet: a OS targeting a single computer which includes the best applications available. This means people can buy this really cheap computer and easily get a great OS on it for free. Ubuntu Eee is just for the Asus Eee. Ubuntu Eee is smaller, faster and we're bringing people the cutting edge of technology (while being stable and free of course)."

jexrand recommends an interview with John De Goes in which he argues: "The tools market is dead. Open source killed it." The software developer turned president of N-BRAIN explains the effect that open source has had on the developer tools market, and how this forced the company to release the personal edition of UNA free of charge. According to De Goes, selling a source-code editor, even a very good one, is all but impossible in the post-open source era, especially given that, "Some developers would rather quit their job than be forced to use a new editor or IDE." N-BRAIN's decision is but one in a string of similar announcements from tools companies announcing the free release of their previously commercial development tools.

Steppenwolf's John Kay, shown back in the day. IT'S BEEN A WILD RIDE "Born to Be Wild" boosted John Kay's leather-and-shades image and spread Steppenwolf's name worldwide.

His face devoid of emotion, confessed killer Phuc Hong Nguyen was taken away yesterday to begin serving a life sentence for the planned slaying of his wife's lover.

A post-mortem examination will be carried out later on a body found in a field in an East Yorkshire village.

A Germantown jogger discovered the body of black man in his 20s along a wooded trail, Montgomery County police said.

A Massachusetts man was killed in an early-morning motorcycle crash Friday that marked the first fatality of the 85th annual Laconia Motorcycle Week.

Baltimore police are investigating shootings that left two men dead and a third injured Thursday night, including a 32-year-old man who was killed on a street corner in Remington - the second shooting in the ...

According to Haverhill police Sgt. Robert Pistone, a husband, 47, and wife, 45, were walking a trail in Winnekenni Park at about 2:35 p.m. when they were forced to seek shelter.

NEW YORKAssociated PressOn the street, Caroll Spinney is a 74-year-old of modest proportions.

On the job, transformed into Big Bird, he stands 8 feet, 2 inches tall and is 6 years old.

There is a new crazy person in town. At least I think he is new, but I'm sure he's crazy.

Plot: A nun, while comforting a convicted killer on death row, empathizes with both the killer and his victim's families. full summary | add synopsis

Dead Man Walking is a work of non-fiction by Sister Helen Prejean , a Roman Catholic nun and one of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Medaille . [ edit ] Background

Dead Man Walking " is the seventh episode of the second series of British science fiction television series Torchwood . It was broadcast by BBC Three and BBC HD on February 20 ...

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Amazon.com: Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account Of The Death Penalty In The United States: Helen Prejean: Books ...

Amazon.com: Dead Man Walking: Music From And Inspired By The Motion Picture: Various Artists,Sean Penn,Robert Prosky,Raymond J. Barry,R. Lee Ermey,Celia Weston,Lois Smith,Scott ...

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Dead Man Walking ... I never want to see this movie again. It makes me cry somehow, even the trailer makes me cry

David Bowie - Dead Man Walking (1997) ... He's TRULY the best singer in the WORLD! I loove his voice so much! And it's a BIG + that he's sexy, beautiful, cute.

On the verge of a revival last year, AOL suddenly imploded. The inside story of a journey to nowhere.