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<title>Microsoft launches free Photosynth for combining shots into one picture</title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008128541_photosynth21.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Microsoft released the free online service, Photosynth, Wednesday night. The software arranges photo sets in their real-world, 3-D context and allows people to navigate smoothly around the canals of Venice, for example, or zoom in to read the serial numbers on the space shuttle's heat shields..]]></description>
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<title>Economy remains stuck in low gear
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<description><![CDATA[NEW YORK - A private sector measure of the economy's health showed the largest drop in a year, and while new jobless claims fell for the second straight week, they remain near the highest levels since 2002. The reports are the latest evidence the languishing American economy remains stuck in low gear.]]></description>
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<title>OncoGenex, formerly Sonus, cuts staff by half</title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129915_websonus21.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[OncoGenex Pharmaceuticals, the result of a merger between Bothell-based Sonus Pharmaceuticals and OncoGenex Technologies of Vancouver, B.C., said Thursday it would lay off half its workforce amid efforts to refocus itself and conserve cash.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129860_webstevebarry21.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Steve &#x26; Barry&#x27;s announces $168 million deal to buy chain</title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129860_webstevebarry21.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Popular but troubled retailer Steve & Barry's may live on under new ownership. The company announced today that BHY Holdings, an affiliate...]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129933_webstox21.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Stock end mixed as financial-sector worries ease a bit</title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129933_webstox21.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Wall Street ended mixed today after investors largely shrugged off a jump in oil prices and focused instead on a bullish analyst call on...]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129865_webmortgage21.html?syndication=rss">
<title>30-year mortgage rates dip this week to 6.47%</title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129865_webmortgage21.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Rates on 30-year mortgages fell slightly this week to the lowest level since mid-July. Freddie Mac, the mortgage company, reported today...]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008128549_amrair21.html?syndication=rss">
<title>American Airlines in-flight Internet goes live</title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008128549_amrair21.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[The rehearsals are over and last-minute tweaks have been made. American Airlines' new in-flight broadband service went live Wednesday.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008128535_bizforum21.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Bernanke on hot seat at forum</title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008128535_bizforum21.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Thrust into the role of financial firefighter, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has taken unprecedented steps over the past year to battle the nation's worst credit and financial crises in decades.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129685_webirradiate21.html?syndication=rss">
<title>FDA approves irradiating spinach, lettuce to kill germs</title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129685_webirradiate21.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Consumers worried about salad safety may soon be able to buy fresh spinach and iceberg lettuce zapped with just enough radiation to kill...]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008128538_foodprices21.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Food inflation here to stay; prices up 6 percent this year</title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008128538_foodprices21.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[As prices for crude oil and other commodities ease, consumers have gotten a small dose of relief at the gas pump. But don't expect less pain at the grocery counter.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008128548_fanniefreddie21.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Fannie, Freddie fuel bailout fears</title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008128548_fanniefreddie21.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Shares of the mortgage finance companies lost more than a fifth of their value Wednesday as fears mounted that the companies will soon need government support and any bailout would hang stockholders out to dry.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008128550_indymac21.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Mortgage caps offered to IndyMac borrowers</title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008128550_indymac21.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Thousands of troubled home borrowers with loans from IndyMac Federal Bank will be able to switch to fixed-rate mortgages under a new plan from federal regulators, who seized the bank last month after it became the largest regulated thrift to fail.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008128533_stoxcenter21.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Has inflation hit a peak?</title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008128533_stoxcenter21.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Consumers hoping for relief from surging prices may soon get it. The Consumer Price Index rose at the fastest pace in 17 years last month. Some economists say the 5.6 percent year-over-year gain marked a peak.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008128561_bizbriefs21.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Air Force tanker guidelines to come next week</title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008128561_bizbriefs21.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[The Defense Department, in talks with Boeing and Northrop Grumman on the reopened $40 billion refueling tanker competition, said it plans to issue the final request for proposals next week.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129092_apeconomicindicators.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Leading economic indicators fell sharply in July
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129092_apeconomicindicators.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[A private business group's measure of the economy's health showed the largest drop in one year as stocks fell, new building permits declined and unemployment rose.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008126388_apmortgagegiantscrisis.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Fannie, Freddie rescue plans leave many anxious
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008126388_apmortgagegiantscrisis.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[A government rescue of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could be costly for scores of investment, banking and insurance companies that hold billions in preferred shares of the mortgage finance giants as assets.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008127820_apinvestmentscam.html?syndication=rss">
<title>&#x27;3 Hebrew Boys&#x27; face new charges in alleged scam
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008127820_apinvestmentscam.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Three South Carolina men accused of bilking investors out of millions of dollars are facing nearly two dozen new federal charges, according to a federal grand jury indictment released Thursday.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129074_aphydroxreturns.html?syndication=rss">
<title>A century after introduction, Hydrox cookies back
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129074_aphydroxreturns.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[If a kid'll eat the middle of an Oreo first, does the same go for a Hydrox? A new generation of children are getting a chance to find out.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129916_apabbottlaboratorieslayoffs.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Abbott to cut 1,000 jobs from diagnostic unit
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129916_apabbottlaboratorieslayoffs.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Drug and medical device maker Abbott Laboratories said Thursday it will cut 1,000 jobs as part of a multiyear effort to lower spending on its medical testing business.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129898_apmerrilllynchcuomotalks.html?syndication=rss">
<title>AP Source: Merrill Lynch CEO, NY AG in talks
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129898_apmerrilllynchcuomotalks.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has been in all-day meetings with Merrill Lynch & Co. Chief Executive John Thain regarding a last minute settlement over auction-rate securities, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129054_apearnsbarnesnoble.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Barnes &#x26; Noble&#x27;s 2Q profits fall 15 percent
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129054_apearnsbarnesnoble.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Barnes & Noble Inc., the nation's largest bookseller, posted a 15 percent drop in second-quarter profit Thursday as it struggles with sluggish consumer spending.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129458_apbrazilunemployment.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Brazil unemployment rises to 8.1 percent in July
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129458_apbrazilunemployment.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Brazil says unemployment rose to 8.1 percent in July, reversing a five-month decline.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129019_apearnsburgerking.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Burger King 4Q profit rises 42 percent
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129019_apearnsburgerking.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Customers bought more Whoppers, Cheesy Bacon BK Wrappers and crispy chicken sandwiches in the fourth quarter, driving Burger King's profit up 42 percent.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129460_apreinventingthebus.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Bus systems lure riders with plush seats and Wi-Fi
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129460_apreinventingthebus.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Think of the typical city bus, and you're likely to picture old vehicles with hard seats and noisy brakes that belch diesel fumes as they jerk from stop to stop.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129940_apearnsgap.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Cost-cutting boosts Gap&#x27;s 2nd-quarter profit
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129940_apearnsgap.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Apparel retailer Gap Inc. said Thursday that its second-quarter profit rose 51 percent, despite a sales decline, helped by cost-cutting and tight control on inventory.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008127206_apclimateconference.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Delegates told to speed up talks on climate change
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008127206_apclimateconference.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Africa already is suffering from "climate shocks," the president of Ghana told a 160-nation climate conference Thursday, joining a chorus of calls to speed up the pace of talks on a new agreement to rein in carbon emissions.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2008129897_apfdavytorin.html?syndication=rss">
<title>FDA investigates possible Vytorin link to cancer
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2008129897_apfdavytorin.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Federal drug safety regulators said Thursday they are investigating whether the cholesterol-lowering drug Vytorin can increase patients' risk of developing cancer.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2008129192_apirradiatedproduce.html?syndication=rss">
<title>FDA: Irradiating spinach, lettuce OK to kill germs
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2008129192_apirradiatedproduce.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Consumers worried about salad safety may soon be able to buy fresh spinach and iceberg lettuce zapped with just enough radiation to kill E. coli and a few other germs.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129479_apfrontierairlinesfees.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Frontier to add fee for frequent-flier tickets
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129479_apfrontierairlinesfees.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Frontier Airlines is the latest airline to announce it will start charging fees when certain customers redeem frequent-flier miles.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129275_apgappersonnel.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Gap names president of Old Navy
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129275_apgappersonnel.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Gap Inc. announced Thursday that it has named Tom Wyatt, a 30-year retail veteran, as president of its struggling Old Navy chain.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008114176_apcommoditiesreview.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Gold jumps over $20 on falling dollar, crude spike
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008114176_apcommoditiesreview.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Gold prices jump more than $20 Thursday after the dollar weakened and crude oil spiked - inflationary moves that boosted demand for safe, alternative investments.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129014_apearnsheinz.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Heinz 1Q profit rises 11 percent
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129014_apearnsheinz.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Food maker H.J. Heinz Co. said Thursday that its fiscal first-quarter profit rose 11 percent, fueled by double-digit sales growth in North America and Europe.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129751_apearnsfood.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Heinz gains, Hormel hurts on high costs in quarter
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129751_apearnsfood.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Rising commodity costs kept weighing on food makers H.J. Heinz Co. and Hormel Foods Corp. in the most recent quarter, even as consumers continued to swallow price increases for their favorite foods.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129188_apearnshormel.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Hormel 3Q profit falls 9 percent on higher costs
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129188_apearnshormel.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Hormel Foods Corp. said Thursday its fiscal third-quarter profit fell 9 percent as higher meat, fuel and other costs outweighed price increases and hurt margins.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129900_apearnsfoodglance.html?syndication=rss">
<title>How Heinz and Hormel fared in the quarter
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129900_apearnsfoodglance.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Here's a look at how H.J. Heinz Co. and Hormel Foods Corp. fared in the most recent quarter, the results of which they reported Thursday:]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129013_apgermanyikblonestar.html?syndication=rss">
<title>IKB to be bought by Lone Star Funds
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129013_apgermanyikblonestar.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[German lender IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG, which has been badly hit by the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis, will be sold to U.S.-based private equity firm Lone Star Funds, the German company's biggest shareholder said Thursday.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008128879_apfarmsceneindianakudzu.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Indiana ramps up its control efforts against kudzu
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008128879_apfarmsceneindianakudzu.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[A fast-growing vine that's left parts of Indiana beneath tangles of greenery is coming under assault as the state ramps up its efforts to kill the leafy invader.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008128993_apiranspaceflight.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Iran&#x27;s space agency says it will send man to space
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008128993_apiranspaceflight.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[State TV says Iran's space agency aims to send an astronaut to space within 10 years.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008128700_apjapantrade.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Japan&#x27;s trade surplus shrinks 87 percent in July
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008128700_apjapantrade.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Japan's trade surplus shrank sharply in July on higher oil and commodities prices, figures showed Thursday, but robust exports to the rest of Asia, Russia, Australia and the Mideast are helping reduce Japan's dependance on a slowing U.S. market.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129032_apjoblessclaims.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Jobless claims fall for second straight week
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129032_apjoblessclaims.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[The government says the number of newly laid-off workers seeking unemployment benefits fell more than expected last week, the second straight weekly drop from a six-year high.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129039_apkohlsceo.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Kohl&#x27;s names new CEO
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129039_apkohlsceo.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Kohl's Corp. announced Thursday that Chairman Larry Montgomery has resigned as chief executive and will be replaced in that role by the retailer's president, Kevin Mansell.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008130011_apvytorincancerrisk.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Lawmakers demand study data on Vytorin cancer risk
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008130011_apvytorincancerrisk.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[A congressional committee is demanding that the makers of controversial cholesterol drug Vytorin, Merck & Co. and Schering-Plough Corp., produce extensive data related to a clinical study indicating the drug might increase the risk of cancer.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129526_apcandypriceincreases.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Maker of Snickers and M&#x26;Ms is raising prices
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129526_apcandypriceincreases.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[The maker of Snickers bars and M&Ms candies said it is raising wholesale prices on various items to offset the higher costs of raw materials, packaging and energy, the second major candy company in the past week to announce such a move.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129196_apmerrilllynchcuomo.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Merrill, Goldman, Deutsche in deal with regulators
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129196_apmerrilllynchcuomo.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Merrill Lynch & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Deutsche Bank on Thursday joined other major financial companies in settling with regulators over their roles in selling risky auction-rate securities to retail investors.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129012_apgayweddingcards.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Now on the Hallmark aisle: Gay marriage cards
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129012_apgayweddingcards.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Most states don't recognize gay marriage - but now Hallmark does.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008112933_apoilprices.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Oil jumps $5 on US-Russia tensions, sliding dollar
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008112933_apoilprices.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Oil prices shot up more than $5 a barrel Thursday, rising to the highest level in over two weeks as escalating tensions with Russia stoked fears of supply disruptions to the West.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129700_apfoodtohaiti.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Relatives abroad offer food lifeline to Haiti poor
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129700_apfoodtohaiti.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Nadia Renaud began shipping bags of rice, beans and other foodstuffs last spring to struggling relatives in Haiti, helping her brother ease the worries of providing for a sick mother who needs constant care.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129939_apvenezuelasabertoothedcats.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Saber-toothed cat fossils discovered in Venezuela
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129939_apvenezuelasabertoothedcats.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[An ancient tar pit exposed when Venezuelan oil workers laid a pipeline has yielded a rich trove of fossils, including a type of saber-toothed cat that paleontologists had never found before in South America. Scientists say the find holds the promise of many discoveries to come.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008128977_apgermanycontinentalschaeffler.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Schaeffler to buy minority stake in Continental
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008128977_apgermanycontinentalschaeffler.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Auto parts maker Continental AG said Thursday it had ended a weeks-long standoff over a takeover bid from smaller rival as its suitor Schaeffler KG raised its offer and agreed to limit itself to a minority stake for four years.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008127353_apauctionrateprobe.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Source: auction-rate probe focuses on 3 banks
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008127353_apauctionrateprobe.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo will intensify his probe into auction-rate securities by focusing on Bank of America Corp., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Deutsche Bank AG, a person close to the investigation said Wednesday.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129663_apstevebarrysbid.html?syndication=rss">
<title>Steve &#x26; Barry&#x27;s may live on under new ownership
    </title>
<link>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008129663_apstevebarrysbid.html?syndication=rss</link>
<description><![CDATA[Popular but troubled retailer Steve & Barry's may live on under new ownership.]]></description>
</item>

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<description><![CDATA[Powerful acoustic devices used by oil companies searching for new sources of hydrocarbons in the Gulf of Mexico have had no discernible effect on endangered sperm whales living in those waters, according to a federally funded study released Thursday.]]></description>
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<description><![CDATA[Qantas Airways Ltd. reported Thursday a 44 percent rise in annual net profit, but acknowledged it is beginning to feel the effect of a slowing economy and higher fuel costs.]]></description>
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<description><![CDATA[President Bush said Wednesday that "hope is coming back" to New Orleans with the help of $126 billion in disaster aid poured into the Gulf Coast region over three years after Hurricane Katrina.]]></description>
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<title>Following AP report, appraisers calls for reform
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<description><![CDATA[Four national associations of real estate appraisers have asked Congress for major regulatory reforms in the wake of an Associated Press investigation that identified key failings within the existing system.]]></description>
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<title>Mexico starts campaign to save endangered porpoise
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<description><![CDATA[Mexico said Wednesday it will invest 163 million pesos ($16 million) to save a highly endangered species of porpoise in the upper Gulf of California, asking reluctant fishermen to adopt safer methods or give up their trade entirely.]]></description>
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<title>Oui, Montreal tops in new Monopoly game
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<title>Recalls: wire splices, bicycle forks, ventilators
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<description><![CDATA[The following recalls have been announced:]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371363336/nonprofit-distr.html">
<title>Nonprofit Distributes File Sharing Propaganda to 50,000 U.S. Students</title>
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<description><![CDATA[A nonprofit legal organization whose mission is to foster an understanding of the U.S. court system, has distributed 50,000 leaflets to students that erroneously say peer-to-peer file sharing of copyrighted music is a crime, with a maximum two-year sentence and $25,000 fine. The National Center for State Courts tells Wired.com that the purpose of the literature, which is propaganda at its finest, is "to educate kids."
    
    
    
    
  

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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371307054/starwars_1609">
<title>Plot the Galaxy on Wired.com&#x27;s &#x3C;cite&#x3E;Star Wars&#x3C;/cite&#x3E; Timeline</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371307054/starwars_1609</link>
<description><![CDATA[The Star Wars empire has expanded to encompass thousands of characters, planets and events. It's the job of Leland Chee and the Lucasfilm continuity geeks to rule on what's official and what's not.
    
    
    
    
  

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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371307055/">
<title>Jar Jar Lollipop? &#x3C;cite&#x3E;Star Wars&#x3C;/cite&#x3E; Merch Overwhelms</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371307055/</link>
<description><![CDATA[Merch and more merch: Movies, games, comics and novels are the tip of the iceberg. Leland Chee shows off more Star Wars goods, like Yoda skateboards, Wookiee slippers and of course, Darth Tater. Beware the Jar Jar lollipop!
    
    
    
    
  

]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371307056/ff_starwarscanon">
<title>Meet Leland Chee, the &#x3C;cite&#x3E;Star Wars&#x3C;/cite&#x3E; Franchise Continuity Cop</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371307056/ff_starwarscanon</link>
<description><![CDATA[

On the wall behind Leland Chee's desk is a portrait of an Ithorian, an alien with a hammer-shaped head that you glimpse briefly in the famous Star Wars cantina scene. In its leathery, foot-long fingers, the Ithorian holds a cube decorated with elaborate metallic tracings, a device known as a holocron. Think of it as a Force-powered hard drive, capable of storing an enormous quantity of information. "It's a piece of Jedi technology," Chee says. "It tells you ... everything."

To Star Wars fans, Chee is the Keeper of the Holocron, arguably the leading expert on everything that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. His official title is continuity database administrator for the Lucas Licensing arm of Lucasfilm&mdash;which means Chee keeps meticulous track of not just the six live-action movies but also cartoons, TV specials, scores of videogames and reference books, and hundreds of novels and comics.




Keepin' it canonical: Leland Chee, continuity database administrator at Lucas Licensing,  maintains the Holocron &mdash; a vast FileMaker database that's consulted to make sure that any new elements added to the Star Wars franchise fit within the existing mythology.

Producer: Annaliza Savage, Editor: Michael Lennon, Camera: John Ross
For more, visit video.wired.com.




Of course, Chee's Holocron isn't a Force-sensitive crystal. It's a FileMaker database, a searchable repository of more than 30,000 entries covering almost every character, planet, and weapon mentioned, however fleetingly, in the vast array of Star Wars titles and products. The Holocron isn't just for fun&mdash;when Lucas Licensing inks a deal with a toy company or a T-shirt designer, it vets those ancillary products to ensure they conform to the spirit and letter of the continuity that has come before and will continue afterward. In the past 31 years, Star Wars movies have grossed in excess of $4 billion worldwide. But retail sales of merchandise stand at $15 billion, and 20 percent of that has been earned since 2006, the year after the final film was released. Careful nurture of the Star Wars canon&mdash;thousands of years of story time, running through all the bits and pieces of merchandise&mdash;has kept the franchise popular for decades.

So Chee spends three-quarters of his typical workday consulting or updating the Holocron. He also approves packaging designs, scans novels for errors, and creates Talmudic charts and documents addressing such issues as which Jedi were still alive during the Clone Wars and how long it takes a spaceship to get from Dagobah, where Yoda trained Luke Skywalker, to Luke's homeworld of Tatooine. The Keeper of the Holocron takes this very seriously: "Someone has to be able to say, 'Luke Skywalker would not have that color of lightsaber.'"

The screening room at the Letterman Digital Arts Center, Lucasfilm's sprawling facility in San Francisco's Presidio District, is as opulent as you would expect&mdash;plush seats, wood panels, crystal-clear projection, and a perfect sound system. So when that classic John Williams fanfare begins and the Star Wars logo appears onscreen in that distinctive font, in that distinctive yellow, it quickens the pulse.

It's also when Chee, sitting next to me, tells me that in an early version of what we're watching&mdash;a new LucasArts videogame called The Force Unleashed, due out in September&mdash;the logo was slightly wrong. "It was off by only a few pixels, but someone in Licensing spotted it and submitted a report."

I grab an Xbox 360 controller and soon I'm striding through the corridors of a satellite that orbits the smugglers' moon of Nar Shaddaa, destroying everyone in my path. My character, Starkiller, is the secret apprentice of Darth Vader, sent here to eliminate a Jedi elder ... and leave no witnesses. I deflect laser blasts from militia troops with my lightsaber and then use the Force to hurl a chunk of metal through a window behind them. The glass shatters, and several foes are sucked into the vacuum of space before a safety wall snaps shut.

I'm beginning to understand the power of the Dark Side.



On the scale of badassedness, obliterating legions of good guys with the Force ranks right up there with leaping Snake River Canyon in a monster truck that can transform into a robot. And it's true that the game's sophisticated physics, combined with clever AI software for characters, means that when you Force-throw a Wookiee into a tree on its home planet, Kashyyyk, the Wookiee writhes realistically and the tree explodes in a botanically accurate cloud of splinters. But that's not what has fans most excited about The Force Unleashed. It's the stuff that happens between the interactive killing sprees: brief cinematic interludes that add new details&mdash;new plot points&mdash;to the saga.

"The game is set between episodes III and IV," says Haden Blackman, who led the development team. Translation: Play it and you'll learn what happened before the original Star Wars film trilogy and after the prequels, two decades that have been shrouded in mystery. Over the course of the game, players will learn the details of the internecine feud between Darth Vader and his mentor, Emperor Palpatine, and the way these two unwittingly created the very rebellion that brought them down.


The game has yielded a bountiful crop of tie-ins: a book, a graphic novel, a tabletop role-playing game supplement, and several lines of toys. With no more live-action Star Wars films forthcoming (or so we are told), games from the subsidiary division LucasArts are becoming ever more important in expanding the universe&mdash;and perpetuating the story-product ecology. And with every narrative beat and plot point, Chee and his dozens of colleagues with Holocron access are there. "Licensing approves everything," he says. "Text, dialog, art ... It all comes through our office." This is where the work of hundreds of writers and artists gets woven into a vast, internally consistent continuum.





The power of the Dark Side: LucasArts' Haden Blackman discusses the story and the technology behind the upcoming game Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.
Producer: Annaliza Savage, Editor: Michael Lennon, Camera: John Ross
For more, visit video.wired.com.






In his 1932 book Sherlock Holmes: Fact or Fiction, T. S. Blakeney used the term canonicity in reference to the mystery novels and short fiction of Arthur Conan Doyle. Holmes enthusiasts treat Doyle's work as if the great detective inhabits a coherent and logically consistent universe. Some of the stories written by Doyle were canonical&mdash;genuine events in that alternate universe&mdash;while others had to be considered apocryphal. (It should come as no surprise that fans would appropriate theological terms. The ecstasy of true fandom can, after all, approximate religion.)

Today, canon and its serial-fiction cousin, continuity, are integral to genres like mystery, fantasy, and sci-fi. The giants of the field are known as world-builders as much as writers. J. R. R. Tolkien supplemented his Lord of the Rings series with hundreds of pages of appendices, genealogical charts, even pronunciation and usage guides for the languages he invented.

Yet in the multiverse of fictional realities, Holmes's London, Frodo's Middle-earth, Buffy's Sunnydale, and Batman's Gotham are mere planetary systems compared with the grand galactic enterprise of Star Trek. When the original series&mdash;known to devout fans as The Original Series&mdash;went off the air in 1969, acolytes kept the flame alive. They extended the stories with their own fiction. They created technical manuals. Eventually, the series became a movie, and then another, and then another TV series, and a few more after that. Each new iteration produced more canonical information. Spock's death, Kirk's son, Picard's adventures as a cadet ... eventually, the writers' room on a Trek show became a minefield. "Someone would tell you that a Voyager episode last year mentioned a bit of backstory with the Romulans, and now you can't do this over here," says Ron Moore, a writer and producer on several Star Trek shows who went on to create the new Battlestar Galactica. "You'd argue the validity of that, but they'd be, like, 'No, now it's established.'"



	
	
		Lucas Licensing oversees billions of dollars in merchandise&mdash;from pillows to Pez dispensers.  Photo: Jeff Minton
		
	







But the many strata of Star Trek books, games, comics, and cartoons haven't been well tended. Some events in the movies and even later TV shows contradict preexisting lore. (A backward change like that is called a retcon, short for "retroactive continuity.") Gene Roddenberry himself, creator of Star Trek, was known to second-guess his own pronouncements about what was and was not canonical. After a while, the retcons and inconsistencies can become off-putting to fans and render once-beloved universes impenetrable to newcomers.

One solution: a reboot. Start from scratch, like Moore did with Galactica. Clever preservation of original story elements retains the old fans, and streamlining and modernizing lets newbies spend their hard-earned quatloos, too.

To Chee, the orderliness of the Star Wars canon is what sets it apart, what makes it feel more real than all those other franchises. "Look at James Bond," he says. "What's real in the James Bond world? What year does it take place in? It's not grounded in a real timeline." The Star Wars chronology, on the other hand, marks time from the Battle of Yavin, the assault on the Death Star at the end of the original Star Wars. Luke Skywalker was born in the year 19 BBY (Before the Battle of Yavin). It says so in the Holocron.

Back in his office, Chee asks his database what else it has on young Skywalker. The result contains scores of fields covering lineage, favorite vehicles, the planet he's from, how to write his name in the Aurebesh alphabet. "Oops," Chee says, blocking the screen with his body until he has minimized the window. "There are things in the Holocron that aren't public knowledge, stuff coming down the pike two or three years from now." He won't say whether those secrets relate to upcoming books, movies, games, or toys. Probably all of them.




Merch and more merch: Movies, games, comics, and novels are the tip of the iceberg. Leland Chee shows off more Star Wars goods, like Yoda skateboards, Wookiee slippers, and Darth Tater. Beware the Jar Jar lollipop!
Producer: Annaliza Savage, Editor: Michael Lennon, Camera: John Ross
For more, visit video.wired.com.





Lucasfilm has to plan ahead and think long term. "We don't reboot. We don't start from scratch," Chee says. "When Chewbacca died, he died." (Poor Chewie yowled his last yowl in 25 ABY, when he was stuck on the planet Sernpidal as it collided with its moon, Dobido, in the novel Vector Prime, the first book in the New Jedi Order series. His death is now canon.)

"The thing about Star Wars is that there's one universe," Chee says. "Everyone wants to know stuff, like, where did Mace Windu get that purple lightsaber? We want to establish that there's one and only one answer."

Star Wars was the number two toy brand aimed at boys last year, behind only Transformers. But toys account for less than half of the revenue for licensed merchandise. The Lucas Licensing office is positively drowning in other merch. Bedspreads, window blinds, pillowcases, wastebaskets, guitars, chairs, baseball caps, beach balls, jewelry, lunch boxes, cookie jars, and kites all added up to $3 billion in retail sales in 2006 and 2007.

That figure includes big-ticket items aimed at adults. An R2-D2 DVD projector. A stormtrooper golf bag. A high-end fashion line created with superstar designer Marc Ecko, including $300 Star Wars jeans and a replica of the poncho Han Solo wore on the ice planet Hoth. There was even a $3,000 suit of Darth Vader-style samurai armor. "We realize that our fans have different levels of disposable income," says Howard Roffman, president of Lucas Licensing, who joined the company a week after the premiere of The Empire Strikes Back, in 1980. "The kids who played with the toys have grown up."




	
		
		
			Leland Chee strolls the San Francisco campus of Lucasfilm.
			
			Photo: Jeff Minton
		
	



There have been some egregious missteps, like the Jar Jar lollipop. It looks like a plastic bust of the hated character, but push a button and it opens its mouth and sticks out a hideous candy tongue for children to suck on. "The tongue had bumps on it," Chee says, wrinkling his nose.

Chee's sense of what is correct in the Star Wars universe has been a lifetime in development. He saw the original movie at the Coronet Theater in San Francisco at age 6. He got his first plastic Star Wars action figures&mdash;R2-D2 and that lame C-3P0 look-alike, Death Star Droid&mdash;for his seventh birthday and from there steadily enlarged his collection, storing them all in a case shaped like Darth Vader's head (which he still has). Chee even kept the cardboard they were mounted on. "The packaging had great visuals, plus, like, a paragraph of backstory on the character," he says.

It's easy to forget that before Star Wars, licensed merchandise was a different, less profitable business. All the big toymakers turned down the rights to make Star Wars action figures; upstart Kenner didn't sign on until a month before the film's release. The earliest product tie-ins were novels and comics&mdash;Marvel published an adaptation of the movie a month after it hit theaters, then continued with its own stories. Soon Marvel had smugglers Solo and Chewbacca teaming up with questionable characters like Jaxxon, a furry green creature with big floppy ears who wisecracked like Bugs Bunny.

"The idea of continuity was alien at the time," Roffman says. "We let Marvel Comics do the stories they wanted as long as it didn't interfere with the upcoming movies, and they went in some bizarre directions."

The first Star Wars novel, Splinter of the Mind's Eye, was published in 1978, before anyone knew that sequels would be filmed, much less that Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia would later turn out to be siblings. "Luke and Leia get ... affectionate," Chee allows. "It's very wrong."

The success of the movies led to more products: TV specials, a Saturday morning cartoon show, newspaper comics, a board game, a D&amp;D-style tabletop role-playing game, simple arcade and console videogames. Young Chee bought as much as he could, including the sheet music for the iconic theme song, which he played at his first organ recital.

After the release of Return of the Jedi, in 1983, Lucasfilm assumed that interest would wane. But the merch kept selling. And then, Chee remembers, the novel Heir to the Empire was published. "Wait, was it 1990?" he says, tapping a search into the Holocron. "I need to get this date right."

It was actually 1991 when Hugo Award-winning writer Timothy Zahn released the novel, set five years after Return of the Jedi. The book spent 19 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and proved to Lucasfilm that even without new movies, it still had a market. "I was in college at UC Davis by then, but that book brought me back into Star Wars," Chee says.

Without movies at the core, though, Lucas Licensing couldn't afford to be lackadaisical&mdash;no more Jaxxons, no more incestuous flirtations. "We set parameters," Roffman says. "It had to be an important extension of the continuity, and it had to have an internal integrity with the events portrayed in the films." Closely tending the canon was paying off with fans. Essentially, all the new comic books, novels, and games were prequels and sequels of one another. If you wanted to know the whole story, you had to buy them all. Neither Lucasfilm nor its licensees will divulge just how much money Lucasfilm gets for each item; suffice it to say the percentage is substantial.



Chee applied for a job as a software tester at LucasArts shortly before Star Wars: Special Edition was rereleased in 1997. The film was an updated version of the 1977 original, with new visual effects and added scenes. (The special edition proved that the canon is vulnerable to retcons. In the most egregious example, an f/x tweak now has alien errand boy Greedo, not Han Solo, shooting first in the cantina duel. This made Solo a more simplistic character.) Chee scoffed at the fanboys who waited in line for three days outside the Coronet to see a movie they already owned on VHS. He had the self-restraint to wait until 5 am on the day of the release to queue up.

When Chee got home from the movie, there was a message on his answering machine. He had the gig. "That was the last time I had to wait in line to see a Star Wars movie," he says.

At first, his job entailed identifying and logging game bugs. His uncanny command of Star Wars lore and his organizational skills allowed him to rise quickly to the role of lead tester, which eventually led him to work on the 1998 title Behind the Magic.

Magic wasn't so much a game as an interactive CD-ROM of Star Wars trivia, a treasure trove of data for &uuml;berfans that included a timeline, a searchable glossary, scripts, and deleted scenes. Assembling it revealed inconsistencies in the canon. "There were differences in the layout of the Millennium Falcon between the original Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back," says Blackman, who, in addition to being project lead on The Force Unleashed, also wrote and did research for Magic. "The continuity fix is that Han Solo made some modifications to the ship's interior."

Around 2000, Chee moved from LucasArts to Lucas Licensing, where he was tasked with creating an even more detailed version of Magic for internal use. "We had several game-design teams, several comic book writers, and dozens of novelists," Roffman says. "We needed a reference for everyone who was playing in our sandbox."

Chee was the perfect person for the job. "I've been amassing Star Wars knowledge my whole life," he says. "My friends were always like, what the heck are you ever going to do with all of that?"

Chee's answer: Create a FileMaker doc similar to the ones he had used to track game bugs. He started transferring information from Magic, from binders, and from the stream of new novels and comics. "You don't know how much you don't know until you get here," he says. "Like, I'd never heard the radio dramas."


In a forum on StarWars.com, PiccoloKenobi poses a question that we've all wondered about at one time or another: Are the Low Altitude Assault Transport gunships used by the Grand Army of the Republic spaceworthy, or are they limited to traveling within a planet's atmosphere?

"LAATs can be sealed to operate in the vacuum of space," Chee decrees in a response post. "But the standard LAAT is not equipped for long-distance space travel."

In the world of continuity maintenance, Chee is something of an anomaly. Most geek-friendly franchises rely on volunteerism&mdash;while Chee was building the Holocron, fans of other canons were working outside official imprimatur. Babylon 5 has a fan-created database. The Buffyverse has several. In fact, the best source for Star Wars information on the older stuff that Chee hasn't logged yet is an online database created and maintained by a community of fans that Chee views with wary respect. It's called, inevitably, the Wookieepedia.



Naturally, some fans chafe at the Lucasfilm pronouncement-from-on-high approach. Take Curtis Saxton, a theoretical astrophysicist at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory in the UK. Beginning in 1995, he released a series of amateur technical commentaries on TheForce.net, a Star Wars omnibus site, that sent shock waves through the fan community.



	
	
		A fan-made video critiquing Curtis Saxton's theory of the Endor Holocaust.
		Video: The Endor Holocaust
	 



Saxton wasn't writing fan fiction&mdash;it was more like fan physics. He started out by estimating the size and power of various Star Wars vehicles and weapons, including the Death Star's planet-destroying superlaser (2.4 x 1032 joules to blow up the planet Alderaan). His numbers didn't jibe with those in the Lucas Licensing-approved tech manuals. But he persisted.

And that's what led to the Endor Holocaust. At the climax of Return of the Jedi, Death Star II explodes while orbiting a forested moon called Endor, populated by cuddly creatures called Ewoks. Saxton considered the Death Star's orbit, the power output of its hypermatter power source, and the sheer tonnage of debris its destruction would have generated, then concluded that the climactic battle must have rained death and nuclear winter onto the teddy-bear tribe. He wrote: "The mass-extinction event at Endor is an inevitable physical consequence of the circumstances at the end of Return of the Jedi. As such, it indirectly enjoys canonical status, even though it was not clearly portrayed in the film." In other words, science says the Ewoks are dead.

You can't posit the genocide of the Ewoks without igniting a backlash. In the forums, debates raged between self-described Saxtonites and their foes. This willingness of some obsessives to go deeper into the fictional world than its original creators did is a mainstay of fandom. "It goes back to Hugo Gernsback, the father of modern science fiction, who encouraged readers to dig into his stories, expand on them, and critique the science," says Henry Jenkins, a sci-fi fan and MIT media-studies professor.

Despite Saxton's heretical notions, he later worked on four official technical manuals. And the notion of an Endor Holocaust has been incorporated into several comics&mdash;as foul propaganda spread by Imperial loyalists. But the fact that official Star Wars products even addressed the idea shows how influential writing like Saxton's can be. It's called fanon&mdash;fan-generated canon&mdash;and it's still a controversial notion to the priesthood at Lucasfilm. "I don't like the term," Chee says. "There's no such thing as fan continuity."

Yet even within the Holocron, not all reality is created equal. Chee coded a pulldown menu that lets him categorize entries. S, for example, stands for secondary continuity&mdash;early unvetted works, such as The Star Wars Holiday Special. Sure, it introduced fan-favorite character Boba Fett to the continuity. But it also featured Princess Leia singing a carol to celebrate the Wookiee ceremony of Life Day, and Harvey Korman in drag playing a cooking instructor making Bantha Surprise.



	
	
		Princess Leia serenades Wookiees on their homeworld Kashyyyk. From the quasi-canonical Star Wars Holiday Special.
		Video: Star Wars Holiday Special - Leia sings
	 


And then there's the very top level of canon, the inviolable, infallible level of Truth, marked GWL&mdash;George Walton Lucas. It's the divine word of the Creator who stands outside his universe and is not subject to the rules that govern it. Lucas approves every important addition to the canon. The ambitious story beats contained in the new game The Force Unleashed were permitted only after he signed off&mdash;and spent hours talking to the developers about the relationship between Darth Vader and the Emperor.

Yes, he'll accept outside ideas. The novel Heir to the Empire introduced the planet of Coruscant, capital of the Old Republic, which Lucas later incorporated into the prequels. But he also used those prequels to retcon the hell out of Chee's otherwise well-integrated universe. Anakin Skywalker built C-3P0? GWL. Yoda knows Chewbacca? GWL.

"George's view of the universe is his view," Chee says with a slightly grudging tone. "He's not beholden to what's gone before."

The careful tending of the Star Wars continuity has yielded great wealth, but the key to a productive farm is to leave some fields fallow. A complete Holocron would leave little room for fantasy&mdash;for fans who, as Jenkins says, "love unmapped nooks and crannies, the dark shadows we can fill in with our imagination."

That's something that GWL understands. For instance, the origins of the Jedi master Yoda, his species, and his home planet are off-limits. The backstory isn't even in the Holocron. "It doesn't exist, except maybe in George's mind," Chee says. "He feels like, 'You don't have to explain everything all the time. Let's keep some mystery.'"

But ... what about the Holocron?

"We work around him," Chee says.


Senior editor Chris Baker (chris_baker@wired.com) wrote about the return of Futurama in issue 15.12.
    
    
    
    
      
  
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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371315462/wind-powered-ra.html">
<title>Riding the Wind Into the Record Book</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371315462/wind-powered-ra.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[A British engineer hopes to pilot his land yacht to a new land speed record for wind-powered vehicles.
    
    
    
    
  

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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371307057/undecided-voter.html">
<title>Presidential Election Already Decided ... in Voters&#x27; Minds</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371307057/undecided-voter.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Many undecided voters already know how they'll vote, say psychologists. The decision is rigged in advance by their subconscious minds, and they just aren't aware of it.
    
    
    
    
  

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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371315463/Songbird_Beta3A_Like_iTunes__But_it_Goes_to_11">
<title>Songbird Beta: Like iTunes, But it Goes to 11</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371315463/Songbird_Beta3A_Like_iTunes__But_it_Goes_to_11</link>
<description><![CDATA[It looks like iTunes, but with less ads and tie-ins to the iTunes store. It plays like iTunes, but it enjoys support from Last.fm and other plug-ins. It manages your iPod like iTunes, but it supports more music file formats. It even has its own version of CoverFlow. It even runs on Linux. Sure, it's like iTunes, but this one goes to 11.
    
    
    
    
      
  
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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371339243/a-p2p-solution.html">
<title>Comcast Does About-Face: Declares Love for P2P</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371339243/a-p2p-solution.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[After testing an experimental file-sharing architecture in July, Comcast looks like it's softening its position on file sharing. The architecture, P4P, lower network costs and increases download times.
    
    
    
    
  

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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371315464/Earthquake_proof_a_wine_cellar">
<title>Earthquake-Proof a Wine Cellar</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371315464/Earthquake_proof_a_wine_cellar</link>
<description><![CDATA[A good Napa wine is priceless, but a Napa earthquake can potentially crush your wine collection like a grape. The nature of storing glass bottles suggests natural disaster undertones. It's an oenophiliac's nightmare. With a little DIY preparation, you can  
prevent a disaster by earthquake-proofing your wine cellar.
    
    
    
    
  

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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371158647/details-rumored.html">
<title>Rumored iTunes Music Subscription: $130 Per Year</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371158647/details-rumored.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[An anonymous tipster seems to have contacted several Mac rumor publications with speculation about an unlimited music subscription within iTunes. According to the e-mail, Apple will charge U.S.-based customers $130 per year ($100 for MobileMe subscribers) for an "iTunes Unlimited" subscription that will include the ability to download about half of the songs in the iTunes store in a 256-Kbps format.
    
    
    
    
  

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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371271300/sony-announces.html">
<title>Upcoming PSP 3000 Wants to Be a Phone, Too</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371271300/sony-announces.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Sony has announced details on its next-generation PlayStation Portable, to be called the PSP 3000, and it looks like a minor enhancement -- plus a built-in microphone and Skype support.
    
    
    
    
  

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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371109598/the-worlds-most.html">
<title>Storming Sweden in the World&#x27;s Wildest Prius</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371109598/the-worlds-most.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Three Swedish gearheads spend eight weeks and $184,275 building the most radical hybrid on the planet to prove anything can be customized.
    
    
    
    
  

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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370906149/JAPAN_NINTENDO">
<title>US Company Sues Nintendo in Wii Wand Patent Suit</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370906149/JAPAN_NINTENDO</link>
<description><![CDATA[A U.S company has filed a number of patent suits against Nintendo, accusing the Japanese gamer's hit Wii of infringing on its technology for a handheld three-dimensional pointing device and a display interface system for organizing graphic content on a TV.
    
    
    
    
      
  
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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371271301/obama-veep-wa-1.html">
<title>Obama VP Watch: Joe Biden Good on Civil Liberties, Friendly To Hollywood</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371271301/obama-veep-wa-1.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[As Barack Obama spends the day campaigning in Virginia Thursday, speculation still swirls over just who he'll choose to be his vice-presidential candidate. The latest speculation is that Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware is highest on the list.

Though he's known best for his foreign policy credentials, Biden's work on the Senate Judiciary Committee has put him in the middle of most of the defining issues of the internet age -- epic fights over intellectual property, privacy and antitrust law.
    
    
    
    
  

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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371271302/book-looks-at-s.html">
<title>&#x27;Strange and Stranger&#x27; Salutes Spider-Man Artist Steve Ditko</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371271302/book-looks-at-s.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[A new coffee-table book gives the reclusive comics legend his due.
    
    
    
    
      
  
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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371203087/review-nikon-d3.html">
<title>Review: Nikon D3 Light-Years Ahead of Other Cameras</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/371203087/review-nikon-d3.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Nikon's long-awaited digital SLR, the D3, lives up to inflated expectations: This camera is fast, rugged, accurate and it takes phenomenal photos.
    
    
    
    
  

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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370596317/securitymatters_0821">
<title>Boston Court&#x27;s Meddling With &#x27;Full Disclosure&#x27; Is Unwelcome</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370596317/securitymatters_0821</link>
<description><![CDATA[
In eerily similar cases in the Netherlands and the United States, courts have recently grappled with the computer-security norm of "full disclosure," asking whether researchers should be permitted to disclose details of a fare-card vulnerability that allows people to ride the subway for free.

The "Oyster card" used on the London Tube was at issue in the Dutch case, and a similar fare card used on the Boston "T" was the center of the U.S. case. The Dutch court got it right, and the American court, in Boston, got it wrong from the start -- despite facing an open-and-shut case of First Amendment prior restraint.

The U.S. court has since seen the error of its ways -- but the damage is done. The MIT security researchers who were prepared to discuss their Boston findings at the DefCon security conference were prevented from giving their talk.

The ethics of full disclosure are intimately familiar to those of us in the computer-security field.  Before full disclosure became the norm, researchers would quietly disclose vulnerabilities to the vendors -- who would routinely ignore them. Sometimes vendors would even threaten researchers with legal action if they disclosed the vulnerabilities. 

Later on, researchers started disclosing the existence of a vulnerability but not the details.  Vendors responded by denying the security holes' existence, or calling them just theoretical.  It wasn't until full disclosure became the norm that vendors began consistently fixing vulnerabilities quickly.  Now that vendors routinely patch vulnerabilities, researchers generally give them advance notice to allow them to patch their systems before the vulnerability is published.  But even with this "responsible disclosure" protocol, it's the threat of disclosure that motivates them to patch their systems.  Full disclosure is the mechanism (.pdf) by which computer security improves.

Outside of computer security, secrecy is much more the norm.  Some security communities, like locksmiths, behave much like medieval guilds, divulging the secrets of their profession only to those within it.  These communities hate open research, and have responded with surprising vitriol to researchers who have found serious vulnerabilities in bicycle locks, combination safes (.pdf), master-key systems and many other security devices.  

Researchers have received a similar reaction from other communities more used to secrecy than openness.  Researchers -- sometimes young students -- who discovered and published flaws in copyright-protection schemes, voting-machine security and now wireless access cards have all suffered recriminations and sometimes lawsuits for not keeping the vulnerabilities secret.  When Christopher Soghoian created a website allowing people to print fake airline boarding passes, he got several unpleasant visits from the FBI.

This preference for secrecy comes from confusing a vulnerability with information about that vulnerability.  Using secrecy as a security measure is fundamentally fragile.  It assumes that the bad guys don't do their own security research.  It assumes that no one else will find the same vulnerability.  It assumes that information won't leak out even if the research results are suppressed.  These assumptions are all incorrect.

The problem isn't the researchers; it's the products themselves.  Companies will only design security as good as what their customers know to ask for.  Full disclosure helps customers evaluate the security of the products they buy, and educates them in how to ask for better security.  The Dutch court got it exactly right when it wrote: "Damage to NXP is not the result of the publication of the article but of the production and sale of a chip that appears to have shortcomings."

In a world of forced secrecy, vendors make inflated claims about their products, vulnerabilities don't get fixed, and customers are no wiser.  Security research is stifled, and security technology doesn't improve.  The only beneficiaries are the bad guys.

If you'll forgive the analogy, the ethics of full disclosure parallel the ethics of not paying kidnapping ransoms.  We all know why we don't pay kidnappers: It encourages more kidnappings.  Yet in every kidnapping case, there's someone -- a spouse, a parent, an employer -- with a good reason why, in this one case, we should make an exception. 

The reason we want researchers to publish vulnerabilities is because that's how security improves. But in every case there's someone -- the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority, the locksmiths, an election machine manufacturer -- who argues that, in this one case, we should make an exception.

We shouldn't.  The benefits of responsibly publishing attacks greatly outweigh the potential harm. Disclosure encourages companies to build security properly rather than relying on shoddy design and secrecy, and discourages them from promising security based on their ability to threaten researchers.  It's how we learn about security, and how we improve future security.

---


Bruce Schneier is Chief Security Technology Officer of BT Global Services and author of Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World. You can read more of his writings on his website.

    
    
    
    
  

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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370596318/dayintech_0821">
<title>Aug. 21, 1986: Volcanic Lake Explodes, Killing Thousands</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370596318/dayintech_0821</link>
<description><![CDATA[1986: A deadly cloud of carbon dioxide sweeps down the slopes of an African volcano, smothering more than 1,700 people.



Volcanoes can kill in many ways, but this one is pretty weird. A volcanic lake in the West African nation of Cameroon degassed violently (you could say it burped, or worse) in the middle of the night. Carbon dioxide is odorless and heavier than air. Most of the victims died in their sleep.



Lake Nyos sits in the crater of a volcano that hadn't erupted in centuries ... and probably didn't actually erupt the night of Aug. 21, 1986.



Magma deep underneath the lake releases carbon dioxide into its depths. Lake Nyos is 690-feet deep, enough for the water pressure to keep the CO2 dissolved in the lake water, rather than letting it bubble up and escape to the surface. And the crater rim towers above the lake, blocking winds which could otherwise stir the surface and create convection currents that would circulate the deep, CO2-saturated water upward to areas of lower pressure. The lack of seasonal variation less than seven degrees north of the equator also contributes to the lake's placidity.



Volcanic rumbling or other seismic activity could have triggered the sudden release of the gas that deadly night, but there's no record of any tremors and no evidence that anything shook off the shelves of homes in nearby villages. It's possible the gas at the lake's bottom just got so concentrated that even under pressure it came out of solution and formed bubbles. Once the bubbles started rising, a "chimney effect" would have rapidly siphoned huge amounts of gas to the surface.



The gas burst through the surface with a rumble, generating a giant wave that scoured vegetation from the shores. The CO2 cloud was at least 300-feet high, because it suffocated cattle on hillsides that far above lake level. Iron from the deep water oxidized and stained the lake waters with rust.



Then the gas crept down the mountain valleys, invading homes. It extinguished oil lamps and suffocated people in their sleep. Some who were awakened by the loud gas bubble stood up and lived, because their heads were above the invisible gas near the ground. But many who went outside paid with their lives.



Few survived. Those from neighboring villages who discovered the devastation recalled with terror the legends about evil demons living in mountain lakes.



Had this happened before? Yes, at least on a smaller scale. A CO2 cloud released by Lake Monoun, about 60 miles south, killed 37 people two years earlier. (The much larger Lake Kivu -- on the Congo-Rwanda border -- harbors not only carbon dioxide, but methane, in its depths.) And Cameroonians frequently find frogs suffocated by CO2 in low-lying mud puddles.



Engineers hope to prevent a recurrence of the tragedy by continuously degassing Lake Nyos. They've sunk a pipe from a floating platform into the depths of the lake. It shoots a geyser of carbonated water high into the air.



Source: Google Earth; National Geographic, September 1987
    
    
    
    
  

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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370487713/gallery_volcanoes">
<title>Death by Volcano</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370487713/gallery_volcanoes</link>
<description><![CDATA[: Photo: Austin Post/USGS
Volcanoes inspire awe and terror because they can kill in so many ways -- flowing lava, suffocating ash, flood from a released lake, landslides, mudslides, burning gas, shockwaves, earthquakes and tsunamis. A volcano can kill even when it's not erupting, as happened at Lake Nyos in 1986.






We start here with three famous eruptions, modern and ancient, and then show the seven deadliest eruptions of the last 500 years, as listed by the U.S. Geological Survey.


St. Helens Blows Its Top, 1980

Mount St. Helens steamed to life in March 1980 and volcanologists knew it was ready to blow; they just didn't know exactly when. Officials closed the surrounding national forest areas to the public, but some people, like resort-owner Harry Truman, said they'd rather stay put. Others, like volcanologist David Johnston, were at observation posts deemed sufficiently far from the peak to be relatively safe.


But when the volcano erupted at 8:32 a.m. PDT on May 18, 1980, it didn't just send steam and ash up its existing crater, it blew its top off, 1,300 feet of it. And it didn't blow straight up: A whole side of the mountain that was made of fissured, rotten rock broke loose. That created a massive landslide and released a deadly cloud of pulverized rock that killed Johnston, Truman and 55 others, most of them by asphyxiation. When the ash combined with lake and stream water, the surging volcanic debris, or lahar, stormed down nearby valleys wreaking havoc.

: Photo: Richard P. Hoblitt/USGSThe Philippines' Mount Pinatubo ejected about 1.2 cubic miles of magma, sending a giant ash cloud more than 20 miles up into the stratosphere in June 1991. Ten times larger than Mount St. Helens' 1980 eruption, it was second in the 20th century only to Alaska's 1912 Katmai eruption. A million people's lives were at risk, but a good warning system saved thousands. The Philippine government evacuated 60,000 from the most dangerous slopes and valleys, and the U.S. evacuated 18,000 from nearby Clark Air Base.



The eruption shortened the volcano by 850 feet and created a new collapse caldera, or crater, 1&#189; miles in diameter. Ash deposits 2-inches thick covered 1,500 square miles of land, burying crops and weighing down roofs. Rain from typhoon Yunya made it even heavier, and the accumulated weight, along with the typhoon's wind and seismic shaking from the summit collapse caused roofs to cave in ... the major cause of death from the eruption. Around 350 people died. 

: Photo: Bettmann/Corbis
In one of the most famous eruptions in history, Italy's Mount Vesuvius erupted suddenly in the early afternoon of August 24, A.D. 79. Glassy lava fragments, rocks, crystal and ash fell from the sky for a week, burying the Roman cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae on the Bay of Naples -- killing at least 3,360 people, but perhaps as many as 16,000. Among the dead was the Roman historian Pliny the Elder, who -- so great was his fascination with observing the event -- could not bring himself to flee from the danger.


So vast was the layer of volcanic debris left on the three cities that their ruins were not rediscovered until 1748. The "bodies" at left are plaster casts made in 1961 from cavities left in the debris by decomposed bodies that had been sealed in rock and dirt for 19 centuries. 
: Photo: Juh&#225;sz P&#233;ter
Iceland's Laki volcano produced the largest lava flow in historic times when a fissure 16-miles long sent a flow of pahoehoe (fast-moving, smooth or ropy lava) more than 40 miles in 1783. The 2.9 cubic miles of lava covered 218 square miles. The eruption continued intermittently for four months.



Fluorine gas fell to the land as hydrofluoric acid in Iceland, dissolving the flesh off livestock. Fully half the horses and cattle, as well as three-quarters of the sheep died. Famine set in, the social order broke down, and looting was rampant. Eventually, a quarter of Iceland's people died of starvation.



Sulfur dioxide gas released by the eruption traveled farther. Throughout Europe a heavy haze filtered the sun and a "dry fog" sat on the land. Excess heat caused scores of thousands of deaths. The hot summer was followed by a long, cold winter. Much of the Northern Hemisphere was 4 to 9 degrees (Fahrenheit) below normal. Siberia and Alaska had their coldest summer in half a millennium. Crop failure and famine were reported everywhere. 



Iceland lost about 9,300 people, but the eventual global death toll may well have been 10 times that … or more.

: Photo: Trisnadi/AP
Mount Kelut (or Kelud), in East Java, Indonesia, has erupted more than 30 times in the last thousand years, including a 1586 eruption that killed 10,000 people. The 1919 eruption disgorged a crater lake into nearby valleys, drowning 5,500 people. Starting in 1926, engineers built tunnels to drain the lake to prevent such catastrophes. 



Steam and hot gasses rise above Mount Kelut in this photo from November 2007.

: Photo: Roger Ressmeyer/Corbis
Unzen Volcano on the island of Kyushu is about 25 miles east of Nagasaki. A month after a 1792 eruption from its current summit, the slopes of an older part of the volcanic complex, Mount Mayuyama, gave way. The resulting landslide swept through Shimabara City. It entered the sea, causing a tsunami. The landslide and tsunami together killed more than 15,000 people in Japan's worst volcanic disaster. You can still see the landslide scar above Shimabara. 



Unzen erupted again in 1991, sending ash flows down its slopes at 125 mph.

: Photo: R. J. Janda/USGS
Colombia's snow-capped Nevada del Ruiz volcano exploded Nov. 13, 1985. The hot volcanic gas and ash melted the glacier and mixed with the meltwater. As the slurry tumbled downstream, it added dirt and rocks, gaining volume and density. Debris flows up to 130-feet thick swept into some inhabited river valleys at 30 mph, destroying everything in their path.



The town of Armero (left) was 46 miles from the crater, but the crush of mud and boulders hit it two-and-a-half hours after the eruption began. The river of concrete swept Armero away in a matter of minutes, killing three-quarters of its population. All together, the eruption claimed 25,000 lives.

: Photo (left half of stereoscope card) courtesy Library of Congress 
The 1902 eruption of Mount Pel&#233;e in Martinique, West Indies, sent a glowing cloud of burning, poisonous gas laced with ash down the slopes of the volcano. It swept into the town of St. Pierre at 100 mph and burned or suffocated the entire population in a matter of minutes. Of the 30,000 people in town, only two (or perhaps four, depending on the account) survived. Three nearby towns suffered the same fate, as did the crews of 16 ships in the harbor. In the 10 square miles of burned-over land, as many as 36,000 people may have died, and only 30 survived.


	
This group of refugees in Fort de France had the apparent good fortune not to be in the path of the glowing cloud.
	
: Photo: flydime/Flickr 
Krakatau (aka Krakatoa), in Indonesia's Sunda Strait west of Java and east of Sumatra, exploded in August 1883 with 26 times the power of the biggest H-bomb test. The collapse of the volcano into the sea generated 100-foot tidal waves that wiped out hundreds of villages and more than 36,000 lives. Much reduced, the sea wave swept around the world.



Four hours after the massive explosion, it was heard 3,000 miles away as the "roar of heavy guns." The sound was audible over 1/13 the surface of the globe, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.



The eruption also threw pumice 34 miles into the sky. Dust fell 3,000 miles away 10 days later.  Islands of pumice floated on the oceans for months, and airborne particles caused vivid red sunsets around the world.



Half a century after Krakatau's epic explosion, a new volcano broke through the surface of the ocean. Anak Krakatau, for "child of Krakatau," (left) remains active and grows about five inches a week.

: Photo courtesy NASA
Tambora, which is east of Java, produced the most-powerful eruption in recorded history in April 1815. It lowered the height of the island 4,100 feet. Heavy ash fall on nearby islands killed crops, resulting in the starvation of a probable 92,000 people.



The eruption of more than 36 cubic miles of pulverized rock produced a volcanic cloud that lowered global temperatures by as much as 5 degrees Fahrenheit. The effects continued for more than a year, and some Europeans and North Americans called 1816 "the year without a summer." Further famine-related deaths almost certainly occurred.

    
    
    
    
  

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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370462168/fashioning-tech.html">
<title>Review: &#x3C;cite&#x3E;Fashioning Technology&#x3C;/cite&#x3E; Explains Knitting, LEDs</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370462168/fashioning-tech.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[The latest book from O'Reilly and Make Magazine explores the fertile intersection of crafting and hardware hacking: Think knitting, plus circuit boards and LEDs.
    
    
    
    
      
  
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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370402000/Get_Started_with_CSS_3">
<title>Design Ahead of the Curve With CSS 3</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370402000/Get_Started_with_CSS_3</link>
<description><![CDATA[The CSS 3 specification is not yet complete, but today's browsers aren't waiting by the sidelines to embed its rich features. Safari, Opera and Firefox are on board, so why aren't you? Start using the cool new CSS 3 features, like rounded corners, today. We'll show  
you how.
    
    
    
    
  

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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370402001/judge-copyright.html">
<title>Judge: Copyright Owners Must Consider &#x27;Fair Use&#x27; Before Sending Takedown Notice</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370402001/judge-copyright.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[A federal judge rules that copyright owners must first consider "fair use" before sending takedown notices to online video-sharing sites like YouTube requiring removal of clips. Universal Music argued it could send a takedown notice even if a posting qualified as a fair use of a copyright.
    
    
    
    
      
  
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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370462169/flash-creators.html">
<title>Flash Creators Jump Into Energy-Savings Game</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370462169/flash-creators.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Greenbox, a startup founded by the creators of Flash, announce the roll-out of its power-consumption-monitoring application. Installed along with networked electrical meters to a limited number of homes by Oklahoma Gas and Electric, the new trial is Greenbox's first move into a market that's quickly become crowded with competitors like Tendril, Agilewaves and DIY Kyoto.
    
    
    
    
  

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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370435297/Administer_an_Epinephrine_Shot">
<title>How to Administer an Epinephrine Shot</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370435297/Administer_an_Epinephrine_Shot</link>
<description><![CDATA[The worst time to find out you're highly allergic to something is when your throat suddenly starts to swell shut. Slow the onset of anaphylactic shock by delivering a quick injection of epinephrine as a first aid measure. Modern devices make it easy, but it's best to be prepared, so learn the basics now by following our guide.
    
    
    
    
  

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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370402002/your-facebook-n.html">
<title>Facebook Ads to Turn Friends Into Marketers</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370402002/your-facebook-n.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Facebook's new social ads could put friends in the uncomfortable position of marketing products that they may not even be aware they're selling.
    
    
    
    
  

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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370402003/tech-gurus-try.html">
<title>Techies Open Up Fantasy Sports Field</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370402003/tech-gurus-try.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Open source is coming to a fantasy football field near you. A slew of tech veterans think fantasy sports could be the next killer app for sports online, driven by open APIs.
    
    
    
    
  

]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370402004/could-satellite.html">
<title>Could Satellite TV Get Creamed by Cable?</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370402004/could-satellite.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Satellite-TV providers are in a sticky position. At a time when pay-TV services are supposed to be growing, Dish Network is losing subscribers. The company faces several industry-wide challenges, including heightened competition from cable operators.
    
    
    
    
  

]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370402005/two-wheels-zero.html">
<title>Two Wheels, Zero Emissions and Loads of Fun</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370402005/two-wheels-zero.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Zero Motorcycles has built an all-electric motocrosser that looks and rides like a real bike, even if it costs a whole lot more. Next up? A street version.
    
    
    
    
      
  
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<item rdf:about="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370402006/analyst-treo-pr.html">
<title>Palm Needs a Savior, and Treo Pro Won&#x27;t Cut It</title>
<link>http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/370402006/analyst-treo-pr.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Palm's just-announced Treo Pro is an attractive device -- but it's just a stopgap measure; Palm is placing its big bet on a revolutionary product still to come. It better work: The company is running out of chances, an analyst says.
    
    
    
    
  

]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-217337.html">
<title>Top five issues your IT staff wants to address but is afraid to tell you</title>
<link>http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-217337.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[If youre an IT manager or CIO, you may want to gather the troops before you begin the Web 2.0 modernization process as even the best laid plans can go awry says Nexaweb Technologies Jeremy Chone.      Commentary--The proliferation of enterprise Web 2.0 has created new...]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-217084.html">
<title>What SaaS can teach us about customer service</title>
<link>http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-217084.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[In the SaaS model, the power is with the customer and vendors need to take a very different approach to both sales and service,  here's how to do it says Archie Black, President and CEO of SPS Commerce.  Commentary--Software-as-a-Service SaaS is one of the fastest growing segments of...]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-217014.html">
<title>Intel unveils Nehalem &#x27;turbo mode&#x27;</title>
<link>http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-217014.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[At IDF, the chipmaker announced a power-control feature in its new micro architecture, claiming it is 'pretty compelling' for enterprises.  Intel unveiled on Tuesday a new aspect of its upcoming microprocessor architecture, which promises better power management and efficiency.    Speaking in the afternoon keynote on day...]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-217009.html">
<title>American Airlines kicks off in-flight Internet service</title>
<link>http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-217009.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[The world's largest airline said its passengers on Boeing 767-200 aircraft can get Internet access on nonstop flights between New York and San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Miami.  CHICAGO--American Airlines began offering Internet access on long-haul domestic flights on Wednesday, making American the first U.S. airline to offer full...]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-216916.html">
<title>Android security team appeals to bug hunters</title>
<link>http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-216916.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[The security team for Google's nascent open-source mobile platform, Android, has attempted to raise its profile with the security community    The security team behind Google's mobile platform, Android, has tried to raise its profile among security researchers by appealing for their vigilance in monitoring the platform. ...]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-216860.html">
<title>Overheated iPod nano blamed for three fires</title>
<link>http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-216860.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Japan's trade ministry said on Tuesday that three fires had been caused by overheating Apple iPod nanos, which it said could be due to a battery defect.  TOKYO--Japan's trade ministry said on Tuesday that three fires had been caused by overheating Apple iPod nanos, which it said could be...]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-216741.html">
<title>IBM: The mainframe is back</title>
<link>http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-216741.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[The company claims the mainframe is finding its way into emerging markets and holding strong globally, despite a shortage of related skills among IT workers    The mainframe is finding its way into emerging markets and is still holding strong globally, according to an IBM executive.  ...]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-216672.html">
<title>Torvalds: No picnic to become major Linux coder</title>
<link>http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-216672.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[The Linux project lead has said new contributors should 'start small' to avoid becoming frustrated with the Linux kernel development process  Linux project lead Linus Torvalds has said it is not easy to become a major contributor to the Linux kernel.   In an email interview with ZDNet.co.uk...]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-216387.html">
<title>BlackBerry rumor mill takes a page from Apple</title>
<link>http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-216387.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[For the past few months, writers have been churning out rumors about several new flavors of BlackBerry. Is RIM using careful leaks to beat Apple at its own rumor-fueling game?  If you thought iPhone nano rumors were hard to avoid, consider the myriad BlackBerry incarnations haunting cyberspace.  ...]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-216384.html">
<title>IBM Australia faces strike action</title>
<link>http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-216384.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[A section of under 100 employees who work in the "Flightdeck" at Baulkam Hills, Australia want a collective agreement granting them better pay and work conditions.  IBM's Australian operation is facing the possibility of strike action among its workforce after a secret ballot opened yesterday for employees in a...]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-216370.html">
<title>William Shatner signs off on video autographs</title>
<link>http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-216370.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Customers of Live Autographs get not just a signed photograph, book or napkin; they receive a customized video clip with a short personal message from the star.  LOS ANGELES--William Shatner sat in a drab office staring at a TV monitor displaying a message he was supposed to read to...]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-216237.html">
<title>FBI, Dutch police crack the Shadow botnet</title>
<link>http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-216237.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[The law-enforcement bodies have cracked a major botnet, asking antivirus company Kaspersky to help victims clean up the malware on their PCs.  In a joint operation, the FBI and the Dutch High Tech Crime Unit have cracked the Shadow botnet--thought to contain 100,000 PCs.     Two...]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-216232.html">
<title>Bill Gates: Software innovation poses privacy challenge</title>
<link>http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-216232.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Bill Gates told a Hong Kong gathering that society will need more explicit rules governing privacy boundaries around software as the mobile/PC line blurs.  As software gets more powerful, privacy issues pose "an interesting software challenge", said Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.   Recounting a short history of software...]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-216230.html">
<title>Security researcher demands money from Sun, Nokia</title>
<link>http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-216230.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[A researcher claims to have found multiple flaws in mobile Java and Nokia Series 40 handsets, and wants Sun or Nokia to pay him almost $30,000 for the details.  A Polish security researcher has claimed to have found multiple flaws in mobile Java, but is demanding 20,000 ($29,790) in...]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://news.zdnet.com/2424-1009_22-216059.html">
<title>VMware bug causes worldwide disruption</title>
<link>http://news.zdnet.com/2424-1009_22-216059.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[VMware virtual machines on all hosts with the company's latest hypervisor, ESX 3.5 Update 2, in enterprise configurations have found that it will not power on after being turned off.  Update at 8:35 a.m. PT on Wednesday: Since ZDNet UK published this article, a patch for the flaw has...]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-216006.html">
<title>HSBC could order 200,000 iPhones</title>
<link>http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-216006.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Global banking giant HSBC is considering ditching the BlackBerry and adopting Apple's iPhone as its standard staff mobile device.  Global banking giant HSBC is considering ditching the BlackBerry and adopting Apple's iPhone as its standard staff mobile device, a move that could result in an order for some 200,000...]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-215070.html">
<title>Mozilla launches Snowl messaging prototype</title>
<link>http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-215070.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[The prototype Firefox extension will bring unified messaging to the open-source browser, if early experiments are promising.    Mozilla has launched a prototype messaging Firefox extension that it says could eventually enable users to keep track of all of their electronic communications, including email, RSS, social networks and...]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-215039.html">
<title>Material bends, stretches and conducts electricity?</title>
<link>http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-215039.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Japanese scientists said they have developed a rubbery material that conducts electricity, a finding that could be used to make devices that bend and stretch.  CHICAGO--In the latest twist on electronics, Japanese scientists said on Thursday they have developed a rubbery material that conducts electricity, a finding that could...]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-214761.html">
<title>Six steps to an effective data governance program</title>
<link>http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-214761.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[As data governance becomes a key benchmark of a company's responsibility to enhance and protect data, here are six simple steps that start to develop a program based on individual needs.  In the past few years, dozens of high-profile incidents involving data mismanagement have gained international attention. Caught off...]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-214701.html">
<title>New Google box for offices can search 10 million files</title>
<link>http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-214701.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Google said it is an offering an upgraded version of the hardware appliance its sells to companies and government organizations for Google-style Web search of office documents.  SAN FRANCISCO--Google said on Tuesday it is an offering an upgraded version of the hardware appliance its sells to companies and government...]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1772">
<title>
            
                Nokia and Sun confirm S40, J2ME vulnerabilities            
            </title>
<link>http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1772</link>
<description><![CDATA[
             According to published reports, Nokia and Sun have both confirmed the existence of serious security problems in the Series 40 and Java 2Â Platform Micro Edition (J2ME), giving instant credibility to the claims by Polish hacker Adam Gowdiak.    Gowdiak left, one of the four LSD researchers who discovered...  
            ]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1772">
<title>
            
                Nokia and Sun confirm S40, J2ME vulnerabilities            
            </title>
<link>http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1772</link>
<description><![CDATA[
             According to published reports, Nokia and Sun have both confirmed the existence of serious security problems in the Series 40 and Java 2Â Platform Micro Edition (J2ME), giving instant credibility to the claims by Polish hacker Adam Gowdiak.    Gowdiak left, one of the four LSD researchers who discovered...  
            ]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1772">
<title>
            
                Nokia and Sun confirm S40, J2ME vulnerabilities            
            </title>
<link>http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1772</link>
<description><![CDATA[
             According to published reports, Nokia and Sun have both confirmed the existence of serious security problems in the Series 40 and Java 2Â Platform Micro Edition (J2ME), giving instant credibility to the claims by Polish hacker Adam Gowdiak.    Gowdiak left, one of the four LSD researchers who discovered...  
            ]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://blogs.zdnet.com/Gardner/?p=2716">
<title>
            
                Pulse provides novel training and tools configuration resource to aid in developer education, preparedness            
            </title>
<link>http://blogs.zdnet.com/Gardner/?p=2716</link>
<description><![CDATA[
             MyEclipse maker Genuitec developed Pulse last year to monitor and update the most popular Eclipse plug-ins, but Pulse also has a powerful role in making Java training and tools preferences configuration management more streamlined, automated and extensible. by Dana Gardner  
            ]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://blogs.zdnet.com/Gardner/?p=2716">
<title>
            
                Pulse provides novel training and tools configuration resource to aid in developer education, preparedness            
            </title>
<link>http://blogs.zdnet.com/Gardner/?p=2716</link>
<description><![CDATA[
             MyEclipse maker Genuitec developed Pulse last year to monitor and update the most popular Eclipse plug-ins, but Pulse also has a powerful role in making Java training and tools preferences configuration management more streamlined, automated and extensible. by Dana Gardner  
            ]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://blogs.zdnet.com/Gardner/?p=2716">
<title>
            
                Pulse provides novel training and tools configuration resource to aid in developer education, preparedness            
            </title>
<link>http://blogs.zdnet.com/Gardner/?p=2716</link>
<description><![CDATA[
             MyEclipse maker Genuitec developed Pulse last year to monitor and update the most popular Eclipse plug-ins, but Pulse also has a powerful role in making Java training and tools preferences configuration management more streamlined, automated and extensible. by Dana Gardner  
            ]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1545">
<title>
            
                Intel backs Microsoft&#x27;s concurrent-computing play            
            </title>
<link>http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1545</link>
<description><![CDATA[
             On August 20, Intel rolled out new parallel-processing tools that support Microsoft's concurrent runtime environment that is expected to become a central component of Redmond's next-generation computing model. by Mary Jo Foley  
            ]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1545">
<title>
            
                Intel backs Microsoft&#x27;s concurrent-computing play            
            </title>
<link>http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1545</link>
<description><![CDATA[
             On August 20, Intel rolled out new parallel-processing tools that support Microsoft's concurrent runtime environment that is expected to become a central component of Redmond's next-generation computing model. by Mary Jo Foley  
            ]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1545">
<title>
            
                Intel backs Microsoft&#x27;s concurrent-computing play            
            </title>
<link>http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1545</link>
<description><![CDATA[
             On August 20, Intel rolled out new parallel-processing tools that support Microsoft's concurrent runtime environment that is expected to become a central component of Redmond's next-generation computing model. by Mary Jo Foley  
            ]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/?p=903">
<title>
            
                10 reasons to love Silverlight and 10 reasons to hate it            
            </title>
<link>http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/?p=903</link>
<description><![CDATA[
             I won't add much commentary to Tim's excellent post up on the Register because I work for Adobe and I don't want to get into a bunch of nonsensical arguments about Flash versus Silverlight. But I will say that Tim Anderson is one of the very few tech journalists who...  
            ]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/?p=903">
<title>
            
                10 reasons to love Silverlight and 10 reasons to hate it            
            </title>
<link>http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/?p=903</link>
<description><![CDATA[
             I won't add much commentary to Tim's excellent post up on the Register because I work for Adobe and I don't want to get into a bunch of nonsensical arguments about Flash versus Silverlight. But I will say that Tim Anderson is one of the very few tech journalists who...  
            ]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/?p=903">
<title>
            
                10 reasons to love Silverlight and 10 reasons to hate it            
            </title>
<link>http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/?p=903</link>
<description><![CDATA[
             I won't add much commentary to Tim's excellent post up on the Register because I work for Adobe and I don't want to get into a bunch of nonsensical arguments about Flash versus Silverlight. But I will say that Tim Anderson is one of the very few tech journalists who...  
            ]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1721">
<title>
            
                Microsoft investigating NSlookup.exe flaw, reported attacks            
            </title>
<link>http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1721</link>
<description><![CDATA[
             Microsoft is investigating new public reports of a zero-day Windows vulnerability that's being exploited in the wild.    According to a this SecurityFocus alert, the attacks are exploiting a remote code-execution vulnerability due to an unspecified error in NSlookup.exe, the command-line administrative tool used for testing and troubleshooting...  
            ]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1721">
<title>
            
                Microsoft investigating NSlookup.exe flaw, reported attacks            
            </title>
<link>http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1721</link>
<description><![CDATA[
             Microsoft is investigating new public reports of a zero-day Windows vulnerability that's being exploited in the wild.    According to a this SecurityFocus alert, the attacks are exploiting a remote code-execution vulnerability due to an unspecified error in NSlookup.exe, the command-line administrative tool used for testing and troubleshooting...  
            ]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1721">
<title>
            
                Microsoft investigating NSlookup.exe flaw, reported attacks            
            </title>
<link>http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1721</link>
<description><![CDATA[
             Microsoft is investigating new public reports of a zero-day Windows vulnerability that's being exploited in the wild.    According to a this SecurityFocus alert, the attacks are exploiting a remote code-execution vulnerability due to an unspecified error in NSlookup.exe, the command-line administrative tool used for testing and troubleshooting...  
            ]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/?p=629">
<title>
            
                LWUIT vs. JavaFX Mobile            
            </title>
<link>http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/?p=629</link>
<description><![CDATA[
             The light-weight user interface toolkit for Java ME LWUIT has been released as open source under the GPLv2+classpath exception license. LWUIT is a library that helps content developers in creating rich and consistent Java ME applications. LWUIT supports visual components, theming, transitions, animation, and more. Sounds similar to JavaFX doesn't...  
            ]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/?p=629">
<title>
            
                LWUIT vs. JavaFX Mobile            
            </title>
<link>http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/?p=629</link>
<description><![CDATA[
             The light-weight user interface toolkit for Java ME LWUIT has been released as open source under the GPLv2+classpath exception license. LWUIT is a library that helps content developers in creating rich and consistent Java ME applications. LWUIT supports visual components, theming, transitions, animation, and more. Sounds similar to JavaFX doesn't...  
            ]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/?p=629">
<title>
            
                LWUIT vs. JavaFX Mobile            
            </title>
<link>http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/?p=629</link>
<description><![CDATA[
             The light-weight user interface toolkit for Java ME LWUI