Simo's Sagacity

Police officer leaves gun in Starbucks (Reuters)

Gary — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 08:02:34 +0000

Reuters - A specialist armed police officer is
facing investigation after leaving a loaded gun in a Starbucks
cafe in central London, police said on Thursday.

The unnamed officer, who the Sun newspaper said provided personal protection for Middle East peace envoy Tony Blair, forgot the weapon after she visited the coffee house last week.

“A police issue firearm was left unattended in a central London cafe on Friday evening and was found by a member of the public,” a Metropolitan Police (MPS) spokeswoman said.

“The weapon belongs to an MPS authorised firearms officer who was on duty at the time. An investigation has begun.”

Read more here: Cop leaves gun in Starbucks
(Reuters)

(Via Yahoo! News: Odd News.)

Orissa Violence Continues to Escalate Against Christians

Gary — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 06:51:29 +0000

A Christian human rights organization has been monitoring the situation in Orissa, India and receiving status reports from those affected by what it calls “this massive outpouring of hate.”

The Washington-DC based human rights group, International Christian Concern (ICC) www.persecution.org , received the following first-hand report from a believer in hiding in Kandhamal District, Orissa, India which contradicts the claims of the Indian government that the situation is under control.

Yesterday, ICC spoke with a Christian taking shelter in the middle of an area where Hindus are on a rampage against Christians. When ICC asked him how he was doing, he responded, “By God’s grace I am still alive, but I do not know what will happen tonight.”

ICC says that according to this eyewitness account, the last three days of violence have resulted in the deaths of 18 Christians that he knew of alone, including pastors, nuns, and Catholic priests. In addition, he said that Hindu radicals have demolished at least 75 churches and hundreds of houses belonging to Christians.

Video Tour of FreeNAS Web Interface

Gary — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:21:29 +0000

I have made another video about FreeNAS… This is a tour of the features of the FreeNAS web interface.

Video Tour of FreeNAS

Dead Sea Scrolls to go digital on Internet

Gary — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:54:28 +0000

Scientists in Israel are taking digital photographs of the Dead Sea Scrolls with the aim of making the 2,000-year-old documents available to the public and researchers on the Internet.

Israel Antiquities Authority, the custodian of the scrolls that shed light on the life of Jews and early Christians at the time of Jesus, said on Wednesday it would take more than two years to complete the project.

New MacUpdate Promo - Back-to-School bundle

Gary — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 05:47:45 +0000

Mac Update have released a new Bundle. The bundle should cost $326 but this bundle costs only $49.99 a savings of over $276.86.

How it works
When you purchase bundles now, you’ll be the immediate owner of Bookends, Norrkross Movie, Mellel, DEVONagent, Periscope, Alarm Clock Pro, and HookUp. MacJournal, Contactizer Pro and LightZone are to be unlocked upon reaching the sales goals above. Every time a sales goal is achieved another application is unlocked and added into the bundle for free. People that purchase the bundle before each unlock milestone will have the unlocked products automatically added to their accounts for free. Because of the overwhelming success of the Mac community in the last 3 bundles, we fully expect to reach all 3 unlock milestones during the 2-week span of this event. All licenses are full licenses with normal upgrade paths.

Returning firefighters find own station ablaze (AP)

Gary — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:59:42 +0000

The De Queen fire station is closed on weekends, so when a call is received the firefighters go to the station to get their gear before heading out.

But when they gathered at the station Saturday to answer a call about a burning utility pole, they discovered they had another problem on their hands.

“One of the firemen called me and said the place was full of smoke. I thought he was joshing me. He said ‘We’ve got a fire at the fire station,’” De Queen Fire Marshal Dennis Pruitt said.

(Via Yahoo! News: Odd News.)

Teenage DNA sleuths expose New York fish fraud

Gary — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 08:03:17 +0000

Up to a quarter of fish in stores and restaurants in New York City was mislabelled as a more expensive variety, according to samples collected by two U.S. teenagers and tested with modern genetic identification methods.

The two classmates from New York’s Trinity school collected and sent off 60 fish samples to the University of Guelph in Canada. Of 56 samples that could be identified by a four-year-old DNA identification technique, 14 were mislabelled.

In all cases, the fish was labelled as a more costly type, apparently ruling out simple chance. It was the first known student use of DNA barcoding technology in a public market.

Learning FreeNAS Book Now Available

Gary — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 06:37:46 +0000

Hi,

My book Learning FreeNAS is now available.

The book is guide to the FreeNAS software and teaches you how to turn a PC into a Network Attached Storage server.

This book will show you how to work with FreeNAS and set it up for your needs. You will learn how to configure and administer a FreeNAS server in a variety of networking scenarios. You will also learn how to plan and implement RAID on the server as well as how to use Storage Area Network technologies like iSCSI. The standard FreeNAS documentation walks you through the basic configuration, but this book will tell you exactly what you should do to plan, work, and deploy FreeNAS. This book has a comprehensive troubleshooting section that will point you in the right direction whenever you need help.

Also when you buy this book you are also supporting the FreeNAS Open Source project through Packt Publishing’s Open Source Project Royalty Scheme. In this scheme when Packt sell a book written on an Open Source project, they pay a royalty directly to that project. Therefore by purchasing this Learning FreeNAS book, Packt will have given some of the money received to the FreeNAS project.

You can get a free chapter to download and read in PDF format. Chapter 2 Preparing to Add FreeNAS to Your Network.

The PDF contains:

My biography (as written in the book)
A preview chapter from the book
A synopsis of the book’s content
Information on where to buy the book

The $199 iPhone 3G is a Myth

Gary — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:01:51 +0000

The iPhone will become available on the 22nd August in several new countries around the world. This is part of the grand Apple roll out of iPhone in over 70 countries.

I watch the original announcement by Steve Jobs said the iPhone 3G 8GB model would sell for $199. He said “We think the iPhone 3G will be affordable to almost everyone.”

He then added “In almost all these countries the price is a maximum of $199″

Great! Excellent, but it isn’t true…

I live in an EU country and today I got an email from Orange with the prices for the new iPhone 3G coming out on Friday.

If you have a contract with Orange already and you don’t want to change your contract then the iPhone will cost 469 Euros which is the equivalent of $692. That is 347% more expensive.

If you get a new special iPhone contract for 46 Euros ($67) per month then the iPhone will only cost you 409 Euros ($602) with a 1 year contract and 249 Euros ($367) for a 2 year contract. That is 184% more expensive.

Over 2 years you will pay $1608 dollars in monthly subscriptions and 367 for the phone giving a grand total of nearly $2000.

The cheapest possible price for getting a handset is if you go with the 70 Euro ($103) a month subscription (with a 2 year contract) and then the iPhone will only cost 179 Euros which is $263. The total you pay over 2 years would be $2735.

So the $199 iPhone is a myth.

King penguin receives Norwegian knighthood (AP)

Gary — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:49:56 +0000

Nils Olav already has medals for good conduct and long service. He made honorary colonel-in-chief of the elite Norwegian King's Guard in 2005. And on Friday he was knighted. Not bad for a 3-foot tall penguin — actually, three of them.