Merckx wins fifth stage at Dauphine Libere, Armstrong in chasing pack
Canadian PressFriday, June 10, 2005
Axel Merckx of Belgium celebrates as he crosses the finish line to win the 5th stage of the Dauphine Libere cycling race between Vaison-La-Romaine and Grenoble, southeastern France. Friday. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
GRENOBLE, France (AP) - Axel Merckx won the fifth stage of the Dauphine Libere cycling race on Friday after a solo breakaway in the French Alps while six-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong stayed comfortably in the chasing pack to finish 23rd.
Merckx, the son of five-time Tour de France champion Eddy Merckx, finished two minutes 15 seconds ahead of second-place Inigo Landaluze in the 219-kilometre trek from Vaison-la-Romaine to Grenoble.
Writing Tool #50: The Writing Process
Use these tools to demystify your writing.
Sniff around
Explore ideas
Collect evidence
Find a focus
Select the best stuff
Recognize an order
Write a draft
Revise and clarify
Graffiti Taxonomy presents isolated letters from various graffiti tags, reproduced in similar scales and at close proximity. The intent of these studies is to show the diversity of styles as expressed in a single character. In these photographs, the �S' is reproduced from photographs of tags taken in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, while the 'A' is reproduced from tags from Central Park North to 125th St. in Harlem.
Can you imagine a house made out of books? A house in which even the table, the chairs and the bed seem to have been made of pages to turn and bound covers? You might say that this is a dream turned into reality by Livio De Marchi!
Two Great Uses for PostIt Notes
Rivals spur men to produce better sperm
Men who view pornographic images of two men and a woman produce better-quality sperm than men viewing pornographic images of just women, an Australian study reveals.
The finding suggests that humans may be capable of subconsciously increasing semen quality when faced with the possibility that their sperm will have to outrun those of other men in a woman�s reproductive tract.
Armstrong stunned by Botero victory
Roanne, France - Lance Armstrong completed what he considered his first real test for the upcoming Tour de France by finishing third in the 47km time trial of the Dauphine Libere's third stage on Wednesday.
The race lead went to Gerolsteiner's Levi Leipheimer, who took over from Frenchman Samuel Dumoulin of the AG2R team but lost out on winning the race against the clock by just 01sec to Colombia's Santiago Botero.
The 33-year-old Armstrong finished behind the former world time trial champion from Medellin in what was considered a pre-Tour de France battle between some of the possible contenders for the yellow jersey.
Armstrong ready for his day of reckoning
Chauffailles - Lance Armstrong admitted that Wednesday's 47km time trial on the Dauphine Libere would be his first big test ahead of his bid for a seventh consecutive yellow jersey on the Tour de France.
Armstrong, a two-time winner of the Dauphine, is using the week-long stage race as a crucial preparation for next month's Tour - which will be his final race before retiring from the sport.
The American finished with the main peloton more than three minutes behind four glory-seeking Frenchmen on Tuesday's 187km stage from Givors to here which robbed his Discovery Channel team-mate George Hincapie of the race lead.
Why Crunch Mode Doesn't Work: 6 Lessons
Publisher pushes textbook ads
McGraw-Hill targets students
Critics warn plan could backfireRICK WESTHEAD
BUSINESS REPORTERThe first thing Tamy Zubyk sees when she wakes up and peels the curtains back in her Ryerson University dormitory room is the sea of flashing, dazzling billboards that pepper Toronto's downtown skyline.
From then on, the 21-year-old says she spends the rest of her day being targeted by ads in subways, on storefronts � even in the women's washrooms at Ryerson, which feature ads alongside hand dryers and on the inside of the toilet stall doors. The classroom is one of the few advertising-free zones for Zubyk and Canada's other 785,000 university and college students.
Perhaps not for long.
For the past several months, McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd., one of the country's largest publishers of university textbooks, has been quietly trying to coax companies into buying advertising space in their texts.
'Reach a hard to get target group where they spend all their parents' money,' says a McGraw-Hill brochure touting its planned ads. 'Do you really think 18-24 year olds see those on-campus magazine ads? Do you really think they could miss an ad that is placed in a very well-respected textbook?'
The Whitby-based publisher, which has made presentations about its prospective textbook ads to more than a dozen advertising agencies, says in its brochure that ads can be purchased nationally or regionally, and 'can be so targeted, you can even buy a specific major.
'We've never offered this before and we'll only offer it to the right organizations,' McGraw-Hill's brochure says. The company plans initially to charge as much as $1.40 per book, and the ads would be inserts, instead of being placed permanently alongside text.
Several media planners whose companies weren't involved in the ad push said McG
Supreme Court Rejects Lexmark's Petition
Monday June 6, 8:53 am ETSANFORD, N.C., June 6 /PRNewswire/ -- The United States Supreme Court has rejected Lexmark's petition for certiorari, upholding Static Control's position against the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and copyright issues raised by Lexmark in connection with Static Control's sale of Lexmark compatible chips.
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20030305/CHW018LOGO )
The latest ruling marks the fifth straight victory for North Carolina- based Static Control Components Inc. and the end of Lexmark's attempts to use the DMCA to create a monopoly in aftermarket supplies. Static Control now offers the only Lexmark compatible chips that have been cleared by the courts under the DMCA or copyright.
In October, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio, overturned a preliminary injunction banning the sale of Smartek replacement chips by Static Control Components for the Lexmark cartridges based upon Lexmark's claims under the DMCA and copyright. The 6th Circuit opinion turned, in part, on the design of the Static Control chips.
Lexmark appealed to the full body of the 6th Circuit to rehear the case, and that request was denied in February 2005.
These pages demonstrate visual phenomena, called "optical illusions" or "visual illusions". The latter is more appropriate, because most effects have their basis in the visual pathway, not in the optics of the eye. I selected these based on relative novelty and interactivity. I will expand the explanations when I find the time, to the degree that these phenomena are really understood. Any nice and thoughtful comment welcome.
Hard Disk Drive Giant Pairs Industry-Leading Capacity with Next Generation Features MILPITAS, Calif., June 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Maxtor Corporation (NYSE: MXO), a worldwide leader in hard disk drives and consumer storage products, announced today that the company will be shipping its next- generation 3.5-inch 7200RPM 3.0Gb SATA and ATA 133 hard drives with capacity points up to 500GB in the third quarter of this year. The new capacity will span the company's line of award-winning products, including Maxtor(R) QuickView(R) (consumer electronics -- DVR/STBs, DVD/HDD combo devices), MaXLine(R) (enterprise applications), DiamondMax(R) (desktop), Maxtor Shared Storage(TM) (easy add-on storage for a home network) and Maxtor OneTouch(TM) (simple external storage and backup) brand hard drives.
As an engineer like you, Dilbert was trained to think through the consequences of an action. He grasps the connection between protection of intellectual property and the motivation to innovate and create. Engineers, like software developers, want their work product to be respected, not copied.
Mission to build a simulated brain begins
An effort to create the first computer simulation of the entire human brain, right down to the molecular level, was launched on Monday.
The �Blue Brain� project, a collaboration between IBM and a Swiss university team, will involve building a custom-made supercomputer based on IBM�s Blue Gene design.
The hope is that the virtual brain will help shed light on some aspects of human cognition, such as perception, memory and perhaps even consciousness.
It will be the first time humans will be able to observe the electrical code our brains use to represent the world, and to do so in real time, says Henry Markram, director of Brain and Mind Institute at the Ecole Polytecnique F�d�rale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland.
It may also help in understanding how certain malfunctions of the brain�s �microcircuits� could cause psychiatric disorders such as autism, schizophrenia and depression, he says.
Until now this sort of undertaking would not be possible because the processing power and the scientific knowledge of how the brain is wired simply was not there, says Charles Peck, IBM�s lead researcher on the project.
�But there has been a convergence of the biological data and the computational resources,� he says. Efforts to map the brain�s circuits and the development of the Blue Gene supercomputer, which has a peak processing power of at least 22.8 teraflops, now make this possible.
