906 Invalid descriptor Indicates that the device could not interpret the Download Descriptor. This typically means a syntactic error.
http-equiv="refresh" content="5" />If you need do a long operation for a website like loading email or pulling up data for a report, this tag will be unreliable.
Chinese animal rights victory takes cats off the menu
Jonathan Watts in Beijing
Tuesday February 13, 2007
The Guardian
China's nascent animal rights movement claimed a rare victory today after rescuing more than 400 cats that were about to be slaughtered for their fur and meat.
They were saved from a market in Tianjin after a standoff last week between 100 pet lovers and police which left one protester hospitalised.
Until recent years, respect for animal rights was almost non-existent in China, but the country's rising affluence has brought with it a pet-pampering middle class. Activists are becoming bolder, posting video footage of cruel treatment on YouTube and staging protests.
Article continues
In the latest confrontation, 100 supporters of the "Love Kitty" group in Tianjin surrounded a market, where cats and dogs were being slaughtered. Many of the protesters were local people who had lost their pets and suspected the animals had been abducted by furriers. The police refused to support the animal protection group because there is no law in China against killing cats and dogs, and all the animal traders were licensed.
Lu Di, director of the Small Animal Protection Association, said: "The demonstrators were afraid that the killings were continuing behind the closed doors so they made their way inside. They found cats crammed inside tiny wire cages about 10cm [4ins] high. About 80 police officers arrived and there were scuffles. One man suffered a head injury and is still in hospital."
To avoid further clashes, the Hebei provincial government allowed the cats to be taken to Ms Lu's shelter in Beijing. It has been difficult for her small, non-profit organisation to cope with so many mistreated animals.
The tiny pup, named Charlie by Humane Society volunteers, nurses alongside a jumble of black and gray kittens recently born to Satin, who was taken to the shelter by an owner unable to care for her.
| i30sx, i35s, i50sx, i55sr, i58sr, i60c, i80s, i85s, i88s, i90c, i95cl, i99cl, i205, i305, i530, i730, i733, and 2004 NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series™ phones | ||
| 1. |  | In a quick sequence, press # * MENU right arrow on your phone's keypad to pull up the Trace Mode menu. |
| 2. | | Scroll down to IMEI/SIM ID and press the option button (•) under VIEW, or press OK to display your IMEI and SIM ID. |
| 3. | | Add a zero to the end of your SIM ID for the complete, 15-digit number. stolen from http://www.nextel.com/registration/wiz_info_imei-sim.shtml |
Timmy the tabby sprang into action by waking his unidentified owner when a mattress caught fire as the family slept early Friday in Cairns in Australia's tropical north.
"The cat was probably the best smoke alarm system ... it was clawing at the occupant's face and got him up and out of bed," Cairns fire service spokesman Robert White-Macfarlane told reporters.
powered by performancing firefox
CruiseControl verses Ant verses Maven2
This week, I took at look at what CruiseControl and Maven2. I have used ant and customized versions of ant in for J2EE builds for many modules source tree as well as projects with one giant nested ant file.
This is my recommendation.
Fontaine first tested her dashboard oven three years ago. She said anyone can do it; the only requirement is for the outside temperature to be at least 95 degrees, so it will rise to about 200 degrees in the car. Temperatures in the area reached the mid to upper 90s on Wednesday.
PELHAM, N.Y. - A pink-and-white gardening glove was missing Thursday morning from Jeannine Goche's front porch. But there was absolutely no mystery about who had taken it. Willy, the cat who loves gloves, had struck again.
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"It has to be him," said Goche, an attorney. "I've heard about him."
As if the gardeners of Pelham don't have enough to worry about, with the rocky soil and the slugs and the big trees casting too much shade, a feline felon has been sneaking into their back yards and carrying off gardening gloves.
TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) -- A mass of jellyfish forced a Japanese nuclear power plant to slow part of its output this week after the slimy creatures blocked up the plant's seawater cooling system.
Published in July 2006, the best selling book Mastering EJB is now in its fourth edition and has been updated for EJB 3.0. This edition features chapters on session beans and message-driven beans, EJB-Java EE integration and advanced persistence concepts. In-depth coverage of the Java Persistence API and using POJO entities with EJB is also included.
“Everyone talks about free-market solutions,” he said, speaking of the city’s shortage of lower-priced housing. “But the solution now is the rich get richer and for everyone else it’s the equivalent of being a sharecropper in the city. I’ve been working five or six years now, trying to save up and buy something. Every time I get closer, the goal moves farther away.”
Asked how adult-dorm life differed from college-dorm life, Mr. Fenn said: “You’re not really at the same place where you were psychologically. Now, for me, I’m kind of wondering: When does this end? When do I get to be able to buy a place and settle down?”
This is how I feel. When will I be able to setup my desktop computer, so I can setup bittorrent.
But the artifact reveals differences as well. According to Caspari, the find indicates that people from that era spoke a much earlier form of e-mail language alien to our own, employing the full spellings of most words, and lacking the versatility and advanced expression of smiley-face or frowny-face emoticons.
Maggie writes in 1995 style emails. 1 rite in 2006 style.
SAN FRANCISCO - A retired mechanical designer with a penchant for poor prose took a tired detective novel scene and made it even worse, earning him top honors in San Jose State University's annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for bad writing.
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Jim Guigli of Carmichael submitted 64 entries into the contest. The judges were most impressed, or revolted perhaps, by his passage about a comely woman who walks into a detective's office.
"Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean," Guigli wrote.
Mags almost dug her eyes out one time too.
Police in Berlin said on Wednesday they had arrested two men on suspicion of placing cement-filled soccer balls around the city and inviting people to kick them. At least two people injured themselves by kicking the balls, which were chained to lampposts and trees alongside the spray-painted message: "Can you kick it?"
Many social scientists, Dr. Ruggles said, also argue that Social Security contributed to the erosion of the multigenerational household, by enabling the elderly to afford living independently. He said the percentage of people over 65 living with their children dropped steadily from 1850 to 1990, when it began inching up.
He had always looked compact and strong, but his toughness had grown a little ... round. Whom was I kidding? He had become a huge tube, a black caterpillar with legs. Thanks to his bruiser proportions, Herman looks as if he can kick serious butt. This is not likely, thanks to a personality more like a doofus, a coot in cat form.
So I could no longer ignore the fact that my cat was getting fat. After all, people would tell me all the time when they saw him. It's amazing how many friends and relatives felt perfectly comfortable commenting about his size and even scolding me for his eating habits.
Last year, a middle-income family spent an average of $190,980 to feed, house, clothe and entertain a child from birth until age 18, with the preteen and teenage years taking the heaviest toll, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department. The more money a family has, the more it tends to spend on kids.
Six Tips for Happiness
Advice from Tal Ben-Shahar.
1. Give yourself permission to be human. When we accept emotions -- such as fear, sadness, or anxiety -- as natural, we are more likely to overcome them. Rejecting our emotions, positive or negative, leads to frustration and unhappiness.
2. Happiness lies at the intersection between pleasure and meaning. Whether at work or at home, the goal is to engage in activities that are both personally significant and enjoyable. When this is not feasible, make sure you have happiness boosters, moments throughout the week that provide you with both pleasure and meaning.
3. Keep in mind that happiness is mostly dependent on our state of mind, not on our status or the state of our bank account. Barring extreme circumstances, our level of well being is determined by what we choose to focus on (the full or the empty part of the glass) and by our interpretation of external events. For example, do we view failure as catastrophic, or do we see it as a learning opportunity?
4. Simplify! We are, generally, too busy, trying to squeeze in more and more activities into less and less time. Quantity influences quality, and we compromise on our happiness by trying to do too much.
5. Remember the mind-body connection. What we do -- or don't do -- with our bodies influences our mind. Regular exercise, adequate sleep, and healthy eating habits lead to both physical and mental health.
6. Express gratitude, whenever possible. We too often take our lives for granted. Learn to appreciate and savor the wonderful things in life, from people to food, from nature to a smile.
They had one squid to eat, used jerry cans as makeshift paddles and wore metal buckets over their heads to keep the sun off them, police said.
The men also conserved the batteries in their cellphones by keeping them turned off until they had a strong enough signal to send text messages to family.
During an EPA spot check, the car ran with no air conditioning, no inclines or hills, no wind resistance and at speeds no greater than 60 mph.
There's hardly anything real world about it, but it gives carmakers what they want -- the highest possible miles per gallon to put on that sticker.
"People are going into showrooms, they're looking at that sticker that says miles per gallon and they're saying, 'Oh it get goods miles per gallon,'" said Consumer Reports' David Champion. "In reality, they're being cheated."
Consumer Reports conducts their test on a track and in the real world.
First, they put them through a simulated city course. Next the highway -- a real highway. For the third test, they take the car out on a 150-mile day trip throughout Connecticut.
All the while, a special miles per gallon meter is ticking away. Their results? Many numbers you see on those stickers are off way off -- one as much as 50 percent.
For example, Chrysler says the four-wheel drive diesel version of the Jeep Liberty gets 22 mpg in the city. Consumer Reports tested it and found it got more like 11 mpg.
Honda claims its hybrid Civic sedan gets 48 mpg in the city. Consumer Reports found it only gets 26 mpg -- a 46 percent difference.
What they say happened: A glass of water fell off their workspace, amidst all of the hard work and Ethernet cables.
What you think happened: The techies are partying like its 1999, and Stu just dropped his margarita.
What you should do: Call the CSO, a.k.a. Darth Vader, and ask him to go down and investigate.
Frank Mong and his wife, Sandra, asked his parents to pick the Chinese name for their first child, in keeping with tradition, and his mother selected one that meant "right and auspicious."
She insisted he spell it Shiang-yu, with the phonetic transliteration system used in Taiwan, where the Chinese Nationalist government retreated after losing the civil war to the Communists in 1949. Not Xiangyou, as dictated by the spelling system developed in the 1950s by the Communist Chinese government when it also introduced simplified characters to increase literacy.
The only specifics offered about Scopelliti's problems at work are that he "made an inordinate number of personal telephone calls" to his girlfriend and sister, and "spent an inordinate amount of time engaged in personal iPod-related activities."
There are no specific details of serious fraud or other wrongdoing in the suit, which charges Scopelliti breached his employment agreement by his inadequate job performance.
The lawsuit demands "at a minimum" $300,000 in damages; it does not specify how the company arrived at that figure.
Regan said the company might have a shot at getting its $90,000 back under contract law, but the demand for lost revenues seems "problematic" at best, even if the defendant "sat there like George Costanza for eight months," a reference to the slacker character on the sitcom "Seinfeld."
"The media in Singapore reports that hotel staff are upset with Chinese tourists spitting in their rooms and smoking in bed," it said.
Posh American neighborhoods recreated as Chinese burbclaves
Orange County, China is a gated community modeled on the posh neighborhood south of Los Angeles of the same name -- it's one of many recreated US neighborhoods springing up in China, including "Soho, Central Park, Palm Springs and Manhattan Gardens." According to the NYT, the houses are "designed by Southern California architects, with model homes decorated by Los Angeles interior designers. The basement pool tables are American. The appliances are imported. The tiles, wood siding and wall sconces are from the United States, too."
The website said that the body of the man had been shipped back from Jamaica 20 years ago by his wife in the barrel of rum in order to avoid the cost and paperwork of an official return.
According to the website, workers said the rum in the 300-liter barrel had a "special taste" so they even decanted a few bottles of the liquor to take home.
Dear Tech Support,
Last year I upgraded from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0. I soon noticed that the new program began unexpected child processing that took up a lot of space and valuable resources. In addition, Wife 1.0 installed itself into all other programs and now monitors all other system activity.
Applications such as Poker Night 10.3, Football 5.0, Hunting and Fishing 7.5, and Racing 3.6 I can’t seem to keep Wife 1.0 in the background while attempting to run my favorite applications. I’m thinking about going back to Girlfriend 7.0, but the uninstall doesn’t work on Wife 1.0. Please help!
Thanks,
A Troubled User
…
Dear Troubled User,
This is a very common problem that men complain about.
Many people upgrade from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0, thinking that it is just a Utilities and Entertainment program. Wife 1.0 is an OPERATING SYSTEM and is designed by its Creator to run EVERYTHING!!! It is also impossible to delete Wife 1.0 and to return to Girlfriend 7.0. It is impossible to uninstall, or purge the program files from the system once installed.
You cannot go back to Girlfriend 7.0 because Wife 1.0 is designed to not allow this. Look in your Wife 1.0 manual under Warnings-Alimony-Child Support. I recommend that you keep Wife 1.0 and work on improving the situation. I suggest installing the background application “Yes Dear” to alleviate software augmentation.
The best course of action is to enter the command C APOLOGIZE because ultimately you will have to give the APOLOGIZE command before the system will return to normal anyway. Wife 1.0 is a great program, but it tends to be very high maintenance. Wife 1.0 comes with several support programs, such as Clean and Sweep 3.0, Cook It 1.5 and Do Bills 4.2.
However, be very careful how you use these programs. Improper use will cause the system to launch the program Nag Nag 9.5. Once this happens, the only way to improve the performance of Wife 1.0 is to purchase additional software. I recommend Flowers 2.1 and Diamonds 5.0! WARNING!!! DO NOT, under any circumstances, install Secretary With Short Skirt 3.3. This application is not supported by Wife 1.0 and will cause irreversible damage to the operating system.
Best of luck,
Tech Support
They are different from you and me, this generation born after 1970. They grew up with a finger on the keyboard and an ear to the cell phone, and in a world where the forces of globalization have broken down national barriers like no time in history.
And right now this group is moving up in the business ranks, becoming managers, partners, and eventually CEOs. Chances are you manage employees from this generation, and it's not far-fetched to believe you may yourself be managed by them before you check out of your career.
They are different from you and me, this generation born after 1970. They grew up with a finger on the keyboard and an ear to the cell phone, and in a world where the forces of globalization have broken down national barriers like no time in history.
And right now this group is moving up in the business ranks, becoming managers, partners, and eventually CEOs. Chances are you manage employees from this generation, and it's not far-fetched to believe you may yourself be managed by them before you check out of your career.
TOKYO (Reuters) - With straps loaded with tamagotchis around their necks, siblings Takumi and Ayaka Mochizuki traveled an hour to a Tokyo store so their virtual pets could interact with a giant tamagotchi that was on tour.
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"I love feeding my tamagotchi," said Takumi, 5, looking disappointed because he didn't have enough virtual money to buy anything for his "3-year-old" pet at the royal market, which is accessible only via the giant tamagotchi.
In a beauty treatment imported from Turkey, bathers at "Dr Fish", a new spa in the hot spring resort of Hakone, dip their feet into a warm pool teeming with fish that nibble away at dead skin and bacteria.
Seventeen tricycles gathered at the top of Russian Hill on Sunday to prove once again why it is not a good idea to ride a tricycle down Russian Hill.
There were more than a couple of skinned knees, an occupational hazard for tricyclists of all ages, including the purported grown-up ones who took part in the sixth annual Lombard Street tricycle race.
The tricyclists arranged their mostly plastic vehicles at the top of the brick curlicue while about 500 tourists, realizing that something even weirder than what their guidebooks had warned them might happen in San Francisco, aimed their cameras.
Shesh!
The purple sorbet in cut glass he was serving tumbled onto the expensive white gown of an obviously rich and important woman. "I watched in slow motion ruining her dress for the evening," Odland says. "I thought I would be shot on sight."
Thirty years have passed, but Odland can't get the stain out of his mind, nor the woman's kind reaction. She was startled, regained composure and, in a reassuring voice, told the teenage Odland, "It's OK. It wasn't your fault." When she left the restaurant, she also left the future Fortune 500 CEO with a life lesson: You can tell a lot about a person by the way he or she treats the waiter.
NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - I have seen the future of management, and it is Indian. Vineet Nayar, president of India's 30,000-employee HCL Technologies (Research), is creating an IT outsourcing firm where, he says, employees come first and customers second.
"Everybody was aghast the first time I said that," admits Nayar.
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Here are some things I can say about him with confidence: He is good at motivating employees, very committed to building a great team, but a little shaky on getting things done on time. These are not my observations. They are what his employees told him in an extraordinary process of upward evaluation he implemented last year at HCL.
Every employee rates their boss, their boss' boss, and any three other company managers they choose, on 18 questions using a 1-5 scale. Such 360-degree evaluations are not uncommon, but at HCL all results are posted online for every employee to see. That's un-heard-of!
"Last year, we caught 95 pythons," said Skip Snow, a biologist with Florida Everglades National Park. That's not counting the 13-footer that exploded after trying to eat an alligator, or two others that got loose and ate a Siamese cat and a turkey.
At the same time, the Globe Mail is reporting that China Unicom Ltd., China's state-controlled (and second-largest) mobile operator has launched a competing service, unabashedly called "RedBerry," a push-email service with a name reportedly intended to blend the brand recognition of RIM's BlackBerry with the red symbol of the state-controlled China Unicom. The RedBerry service uses CDMA-based handsets already marketed by China Unicom, rather than a specialized handheld device; accounts reportedly cost less than $1 a month.
what a great deal! I would pay $1 a month for push email. I currently get my yahoo mail and corporate mail instantly, and it's great! Of course, I still don't reply :(
What made the $12.08 transaction remarkable was that the customer was not just outside Vargas's workplace here on California's central coast. She was at a McDonald's in Honolulu. And within a two-minute span, Vargas had also taken orders from drive-through windows in Gulfport, Miss., and Gillette, Wyo.
Abstract
This document specifies best practices for Web content when accessed from mobile devices.
The primary goal is to improve the user experience of the Web when accessed from such devices.
It is directed at all participants in the mobile value chain.
Readers of this document are expected to be familiar with creation of Web sites, and have a general familiarity with the technologies involved, such as web servers and HTTP. Readers are not expected to have a background in mobile-specific technologies.
So useful for mobile dev!
So without further ado, here is some more of you might be suffocating in a constipated bureaucracy if...
1. You access the Internet using a dial-up connection.
2. Your cube has only enough room for an L-shaped desk and a chair.
3. You are developing enterprise software on a 15-inch monitor.
4. Management forces you to use the latest technology whether it makes sense or not.
5. Your project is suspended mid-stream because the funds run out when the fiscal year ends.
2 out of 5!
| This Is My Life, Rated | |
| Life: |  8.6 |
| Mind: | 8.8 |
| Body: |  7.6 |
| Spirit: | 8.3 |
| Friends/Family: |  5.5 |
| Love: |  10 |
| Finance: | 9 |
| Take the Rate My Life Quiz | |
Wowers what a trip!
One fried squid curry with rice
One can of wasabi peas
One piece of salmon
One piece of fried steak
2 ginger ales
5 hot chicken wings
Was what I ate yesterday
