At some point, every actress decides to have her "Marilyn moment" and dons a platinum wig and a fake mole to prove that she's capable of playing an American icon. This week, Lindsay Lohan graces New York magazine in a spread shot by Bert Stern. Yes, that would be the same Stern who shot Monroe six weeks before she died of a reported overdose in 1962.

In the story, Lohan says of Monroe and Heath Ledger's tragic outcome: "I sure as hell wouldn't let it happen to me." Then, why are you bouncing in and out of rehab and recreating a photo shoot Drewthat precisely mimics a suicidal woman's last flirtation with fame? And Stern should be ashamed of himself for aping such a memorable photo shoot for a 21-year-old actress whose most notable credit is "Herbie Fully Loaded." Monroe - who starred in fantastic movies like "The Misfits" and "Some Like It Hot" - died of acute barbiturate poisoning at age 36.

Lindsay Lohan: You're no Marilyn Monroe

"I neither will aspire to nor will I accept, the position of president of the Council of state and commander in chief," he wrote in the letter.

Mr Castro handed over power temporarily to his brother, Raul, in July 2006 when he underwent intestinal surgery.

The 81-year-old has ruled Cuba since leading a communist revolution in 1959.

In December, Mr Castro indicated that he could possibly step down in favour of a younger generation.

The National Assembly is scheduled to meet on 24 February to elect his successor.

Lets hope that now the Cuban people can get back to real life ...

Fidel Castro announces retirement!

Database management systems (DBMS) are 20 years out of date and should be completely rewritten to reflect modern use of computers.

That's according to a group of academics including DBMS pioneer Mike Stonebraker (http://s2k-ftp.cs.berkeley.edu:8000/nasa_e2e/mike.html), Ingres founder and a Postgres architect taking his second controversial outing so far this year. Stonebraker upset many last month for his criticism (http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2008/01/24/stonebraker_dewitt_mapreduce/) of Google's MapReduce.

In a paper (http://www.vldb.org/conf/2007/papers/industrial/p1150-stonebraker.pdf) entitled The end of an architectural era (It's time for a complete rewrite), the group - drawn from DBMS specialists at MIT and in industry - have said that modern use of computers renders many features of mainstream DBMS obsolete.

They have argued that DBMS designs such as Oracle and SQL Server come from an age when online transaction processing (OLTP) dominated and required techniques such as multi threading and transaction locking. They said that modern transactions - entered via web pages - do not need these expensive processing overheads and DBMS should, therefore, be re-designed without them. Persistent storage such as disks are also seen as unnecessary and could be replaced by geographically dispersed RAM storage.

Stonebraker and his group also advocate abandoning SQL because they see no need for a separate data manipulation language. Data manipulation, they said, can be performed with other tasks using languages such as Ruby. They describe a prototype DBMS called H-Store that embodies these ideas.

While there is certainly a point to be made about the way OLTP works in modern computer environments and the group has some persuasive arguments, it seems unlikely that mainstream DBMS builders will move away from tried-and-tested TP technologies in the near future. Banks and financial institutions in particular will want to hang on to the comfort and security provided by DBMS, which fully implement ACID (http://www.linktionary.com/a/acid.html) properties

Time to rewrite DBMS, says Ingres founder

Blade servers, virtualization software and fancy accelerators might be all the rage in the server business, but Google doesn't want any part of the hype.

Google will continue crafting its own low-cost, relatively low-performing boxes to support its software-over-the-wire plans. The ad broker looks to focus on lowering energy costs, improving its parallelized code and boosting component life spans rather than messing with things such as VMware and GPGPUs (general purpose GPUs). So, those of you buying into the software as a service idea might want to have a think about Google's contrarian approach when the likes of HP, IBM, Sun Microsystems and Dell come hawking their latest and greatest kit.

Okay, sure, basing your data center designs on Google's whims might not be the most practical course of action. Google builds new data centers at an astonishing pace and works on a scale seen by only the largest service providers.

"Our applications don't run on anything smaller than a data warehouse," said Google engineer Luiz André Barroso, while speaking last week at the Usenix event in Santa Clara, California.

By data warehouse, Barroso means a facility with software spread across thousands of systems. Google has announced at least four such $600m systems in the last few months just in the US. This type of scale has Google working on software problems, energy issues and component conundrums beyond the realm of conception for most companies. For that reason, Google has largely bypassed the Tier 1 server and software vendors' pitches.

For example, Barroso noted that he "loves" the people at VMware but doesn't plan to use their software.

"I think it will be very sad if we need to use virtualization," he said. "It is hard to claim we will never use it, but we don't really use it today."

Instead, Google relies on maintaining tight control over its entire software infrastructure from the OS level on up to the applications and management packages. It's constantly fine-tuning these systems to create a data warehouse that almost asks as a single, massive virtualized system.

And rather than waiting for ISVs to write multi-threaded code for dual- and quad-core chips out there, Google has decided to do much of the work on its own.

"We might be one of the few companies on the planet that throws software away and writes it from scratch," Barroso said.

Along those lines, Google recently acquired PeakStream - a start-up dedicated to improving the performance of software written in a single-threaded model on multi-core processors such as GPGPUs. Google sidestepped right past the GPGPU technology to have the PeakStream crew focus instead on improving Google's existing code.

Google abstains from blades, VMware and the rest of the hype

A Pennsylvania crusader has slapped Google with a $5bn lawsuit, claiming that the world's largest search engine is endangering his personal safety.

With a suit filed in federal court, Dylan Stephen Jayne insists that the company is guilty of "crimes against humanity" because its name turns up when his social security number is scrambled and turned upside down.

After much study, The Reg can confirm that Jayne's tax payer ID can be juggled to reveal the word Google - if you use your imagination. But we have elected not to publish the number. For obvious reasons.

By calling itself Google, Jayne argues, Google has exposed him to attack by an army of culturally diverse, net-savvy terrorists. "A person regardless of race or religion that wishes to cause acts of terrorism would look for social security numbers that are made readily available on the public use databases," his suit reads.

And he's adamant that if Google claims ignorance, many people could end up dead or buck naked. "The 'I don't know' defense obviously is a waste of money, time, and puts the lives of Americans and illegal aliens at risk of death or serious undress."

Will the suit stand up in court? According to Santa Clara University law professor and tech law blogger Eric Goldman, who first brought the suit to popular attention, the answer is "no."

But Goldman could be wrong. The court could side with Jayne. After all, the US government has made far more ridiculous decisions in the name of anti-terrorism.

Even if Google comes out on top, Goldman told us, the company will have no choice but to spill some dough on its lawyers. And if it loses? Jayne is asking damages of $5bn.

The other question is where the money will come from. At one point in Jayne's suit - which is handwritten - the defendant is listed as the "Google Internet Search Engine." But in other places, he accuses the "Google Internet Search Engine Founders."

So a $5bn bill could land on Google - or it could land on founding fathers Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Of course, that's pocket change to all three.

We're also worried that additional suits are on the way from Dylan Stephen Jayne. According to his Google complaint, the Philadelphia 76ers play a rather important role in the exposure of his social security number, and The Reg can confirm this is indeed the case - if you use your imagination.

And we might see Jayne sue himself. In filing his Google suit, he provided more than just a social security number. Other exhibits include a driver's license, a bank account number, a bank routing number, a monthly bank statement, a social security statement, and a library card. And all this is now available on the web. ®

Google sued for 'crimes against humanity'

A former Google contract worker is claiming $25m damages from the search monolith for allegedly stealing his idea for Google Sky - the heavenly Google Earth feature that allows users to navigate the universe.

Former contractor sues Google for $25m [printer-friendly] | Reg Developer

e appear to be memory coils (DNA carriers capable of experience) in a computer-like thinking system that, although we have correctly recorded and stored thousands of years of experimental information (knowledge, gnosis), and each of us possesses a somewhat different deposit from all the other life forms, there is a malfunction--a failure--of memory retrieval. There lies the trouble in our particular subcircuit. "Salvation" through gnosis - more properly anamnesis (the loss of amnesia)--although it has individual significance for each of us--a quantum leap in perception, identity, cognition, understanding, world--and self-experience, including immortality--it has further and more truly ultimate importance for the system (structure) as a whole, inasmuch as these memories (data) are needed or valuable to it, and to its overall functioning.

Therefore it is in the process of self-repair, which includes: rebuilding our subcircuit (world) via linear and orthogonal time changes (sequences of events), as well as continual signaling to us both en masse and individually (to us received subliminally by the right brain hemisphere, which gestalts the constituents of the messages into meaningful entities), to stimulate blocked neural (memory) banks within us to fire and hence retrieve what is there.

The adventitious information of gnosis, then, consists of disinhibiting messages (instructions), with the core (main) content actually intrinsic to us - that is, already there (first observed by Plato, that learning is a form of remembering).

The ancients possessed techniques (sacraments and rituals) used largely in the Greco-Roman mystery religions, including early Christianity, to induce firing and retrieval, mainly with a sense of its restorative (repairing) value to the individuals; the Gnostics, however, and Mani correctly saw the ontological value to what they called the Godhead Itself (i.e. the total entity).

(Note: While such "Enlightened" spiritual leaders as Zoroaster, Mani, Buddha, and Elijah can be regarded as receptors of the entity's total wisdom, Christ seems to have been an actual terminal of this computerlike entity, in which case he did not speak for it but was it. "Was," in this case, standing for "consisted of a microform of it.")

Outline in Abstract Form of a New Model of Reality

I never thought I would ever see an emergency plan for a space
object re-entry but attached is the emergency guide announced by the
Department of Defense.

In addition... below are two interesting links from FEMA...

Public Health Emergency Response: A Guide for Leaders and
Responders.

Department of Health and Human Services. Public Health Emergency
Response: A Guide for Leaders and Responders. Washington, DC: HHS,
August 2007, pdf files updated October 2007, 129 pages.

http://www.hhs.gov/disasters/press/newsroom/leadersguide/freo-full-print.pdf

"The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) created
this guide to provide public officials (e.g., mayors, governors, county executives, emergency managers) and first responders."

Bibliography of Emergency Management & Related References On-Hand:

Since the last post relating to the Bibliography, a revised version
has been posted to the FEMA EM Hi-Ed Program website - EM References
section

http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/edu/highref.asp

and an update of that version will soon be provided to the webmaster to upload to the website sometime next week.

Here are the links to the files:
http://lite.myfabrik.com/get/0001004aePjcEW/FEMAERGResponderGuide-SpaceObject-FINAL-02-14-2008.pdf
http://lite.myfabrik.com/get/0001004aAW4NGn/First-Responder-GuideMemo_FINAL_02-14-0822.doc
http://lite.myfabrik.com/get/0001004aZ5R62S/SpaceObjectConOps_FINAL-02-14-08.doc

I thought everyone might like to see some of these....

Space Object Re-entry Materials Guide and More... (HHS, FEMA, DOD,

I know alot of people are probably wondering why the tornado lifted as it approached Davidson County Tuesday Night February 5th, 2008.

I'm not sure that we will ever know the complete answer but here are my thoughts as what may have caused it to lift as it moved through Davidson County.

Over the years there have been alot of studies of supercell tornadoes and their environment.

One concept that I think could have played a role is that of the Rear Flank Downdraft.

The Rear Flank Downdraft is a prominent feature of tornadic supercells. The Rear Flank Downdraft forms on the backside of the supercell storm and can be observed visually as a clear slot. The Rear Flank Downdraft is a region of dry air wrapping around the back of a mesocyclone in a supercell thunderstorm. These areas of descending air are essential in the production of supercellular tornadoes.

Warm Rear Flank Downdrafts promote tornadoes, while Cold Rear Flank Downdrafts
discourage them.

Cold air downbursts impinging upon the tornado as it approached Davidson County would have caused the tornado funnel to tilt increasingly from the vertical, becoming a funnel cloud as it lifted above the ground and possibly dissipating over Davidson County to only reform in Sumner County a short while later as warmer air got entrained.

Spotter reports of strong, warm inflow winds Southeast of the wall cloud (area of strongest
updraft) would suggest a higher tornado risk than the case where the wall cloud is undercut
by cold air outflow.

-Bobby Boyd
Meteorologist
NWS/Nashville, TN

Why Did The Tornado Skip Nashville & Davidson County - A Meteorologist Theory

We've already seen plenty of evidence of the potential damage that sat navs can cause, but the UK's Network Rail has now put a figure on at least some of it, saying that the devices are responsible for damaging some 2,000 bridges per year and causing 5,000 hours of delays. That, thankfully, is not from the satellites falling from the sky, but rather from over drivers relying a little too heavily on GPS units (in particular those driving trucks too large for the bridges), a problem apparently so bad that some places in the UK have taken to putting up signs warning of the dangers. That's apparently not quite enough to solve the problem, however, and now , in addition to warning people to use a little common sense, Network Rail is also reportedly attempting to map all of the UK's low bridges and level crossings so that the information can be added to GPS software.

UK blames sat navs for damaging 2,000 bridges per year