Archive for the ‘Says’ Category
Monaster/News
STFree Certificates founder Eli Dancy is one of 15,000 cardholders.
Monaster/News
Dancy displays a card.
Monaster/News
Call it a license to thrill.
Sexually active New Yorkers looking to wise up before turning the lights down can verify their partners’ sexual health status with a simple glance in their wallet.
Manhattan-based company STFree Certifications provides its health-conscious customers a sexual history “license” with a phone number on the back that enables them to prove their testing backgrounds to potential partners.
More than 15,000 people nationwide have signed up for the STFree service, launched in 2004 by Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, native Eli Dancy.
Dancy, a former club promoter, said he saw “a lot of irresponsibility” in his neighborhood and created the STFree card to help raise awareness.
“In places like where I grew up and where I worked, there are incredibly high HIV and STD rates,” said Dancy, 28. “This card opens up the conversation for people to talk about it.”
Nearly one-third of New Yorkers with multiple sex partners regularly have sex without condoms, government statistics show. More than 100,000 New Yorkers have HIV or AIDS.
“People in our community don’t take the time to check each other, and it puts a lot of lives at risk,” said Harlem resident Tawanna Jones, 23.
At registration, which can be completed online or inside an STFree van that travels citywide, program subscribers must provide a detailed sexual profile and be tested.
To access the testing history of an STFree cardholder, partners must have access to the phone number located on the back of the card as well as to a PIN number provided only to the STFree member.
“This card will keep people from lying and get it all out in the open,” said Bronx beautician Lorna Smith, 51, who lives in the borough with the highest AIDS death toll citywide.
“It will let you know who’s safe, and who’s not. It’s definitely a good idea,” said fireproofer Eric Lopez, 28, of Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
STFree members pay a one-time $19.99 fee for the service – which Dancy said will allow more people to join.
Korean War’s Lost Chapter: South Korea Says U.S. Killed Hundreds of Civilians
Posted on: August 19, 2008
North Korean troops surrendered to American soldiers on Wolmi Island on Sept. 22, 1950.
WOLMI ISLAND, South Korea — When American troops stormed this island more than half a century ago, it was a hive of Communist trenches and pillboxes. Now it is a park where children play and retirees stroll along a tree-shaded esplanade.
From a hilltop across a narrow channel, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, memorialized in bronze, appears to gaze down at the beaches of Inchon where his troops splashed ashore in September 1950, changing the course of the Korean War and making him a hero here.
In the port below, rows of cars, gleaming in the sun, wait to be shipped around the world — testimony to South Korea’s industrial might and a reminder of which side has triumphed economically since the conflict ended 55 years ago.
But inside a ragged tent at the entrance of the park, some aging South Koreans gather daily to draw attention to their side of the conflict, a story of carnage not mentioned in South Korea’s official histories or textbooks.
“When the napalm hit our village, many people were still sleeping in their homes,” said Lee Beom-ki, 76. “Those who survived the flames ran to the tidal flats. We were trying to show the American pilots that we were civilians. But they strafed us, women and children.”
Village residents say dozens of civilians were killed.
The attack, though not the civilian casualties, has been corroborated by declassified United States military documents recently reviewed by South Korean investigators. On Sept. 10, 1950, five days before the Inchon landing, according to the documents, 43 American warplanes swarmed over Wolmi, dropping 93 napalm canisters to “burn out” its eastern slope in an attempt to clear the way for American troops.
Korean War’s Lost Chapter: South Korea Says U.S. Killed Hundreds of Civilians
Posted on: August 19, 2008
North Korean troops surrendered to American soldiers on Wolmi Island on Sept. 22, 1950.
WOLMI ISLAND, South Korea — When American troops stormed this island more than half a century ago, it was a hive of Communist trenches and pillboxes. Now it is a park where children play and retirees stroll along a tree-shaded esplanade.
From a hilltop across a narrow channel, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, memorialized in bronze, appears to gaze down at the beaches of Inchon where his troops splashed ashore in September 1950, changing the course of the Korean War and making him a hero here.
In the port below, rows of cars, gleaming in the sun, wait to be shipped around the world — testimony to South Korea’s industrial might and a reminder of which side has triumphed economically since the conflict ended 55 years ago.
But inside a ragged tent at the entrance of the park, some aging South Koreans gather daily to draw attention to their side of the conflict, a story of carnage not mentioned in South Korea’s official histories or textbooks.
“When the napalm hit our village, many people were still sleeping in their homes,” said Lee Beom-ki, 76. “Those who survived the flames ran to the tidal flats. We were trying to show the American pilots that we were civilians. But they strafed us, women and children.”
Village residents say dozens of civilians were killed.
The attack, though not the civilian casualties, has been corroborated by declassified United States military documents recently reviewed by South Korean investigators. On Sept. 10, 1950, five days before the Inchon landing, according to the documents, 43 American warplanes swarmed over Wolmi, dropping 93 napalm canisters to “burn out” its eastern slope in an attempt to clear the way for American troops.
It’s official: the guys who founded Google are grown up.
That was the pronouncement Thursday from Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, who was hired in 2001 to provide mature, traditional business savvy to the Internet search company founded by whiz kids Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
“The boys have grown up,” Schmidt told a news conference ahead of the wildly successful company’s annual meeting.
Now billionaires, the two who formed the company, which has the motto “Don’t Be Evil,” were seen as “brilliant young founders,” Schmidt said.
“They now function in the company as the senior executives with the kind of skills and experience –“
“– We wish he had five years ago,” Page said, finishing Schmidt’s thought.
Page, 35, and Brin, who was born in the Soviet Union 34 years ago, made history in their 20s when they set up the Google search engine.
“Now we don’t have to have the same kind of arguments,” said Schmidt, who at 53 qualifies as an old man by the standards of the youthful Google campus.
“In fact, they really are running the companies that they founded at the scale and with the insights that you would expect of people who are no longer young founders but are mature business leaders,” he offered.
Brin and Page ranked as number 32 and 33 on Forbes’ 2008 list of billionaires, with more than $18 billion each, but Thursday they downplayed the effects of overwhelming wealth.
“I don’t think at a certain scale it matters, but I do have a pretty good toy budget now,” Brin said when asked about how vast wealth had changed his life. “I just got a new monitor.”
Page mentioned an even more modest benefit: “I don’t have to do laundry.”
To which Schmidt, who favors a more traditional coat and tie to the founders’ more casual dress, replied: “I think the clothes are pretty much the same.”
Brin wore a black pullover shirt. Page wore a black jacket over a gray pullover shirt.
“Those aspects of their personalities have not changed,” Schmidt said. “They care a lot about the principles of the company. They don’t care a lot about the other things.”
NO MORE ALL-NIGHTERS
Both Page and Brin got married over the past year but closely guard their personal lives. At the news conference, both said their work lives had certainly changed.
“One thing is that we have 10 or 20,000 people to help us,” Brin said. “Certainly I am not pulling all-nighters all the time like we were when we were in the garage, when we were only three or four people doing everything.”
“I never got money for reprogramming Echostar cards. Someone is trying to set me up,” said Christopher Tarnovsky with regards to the allegations leveled against him.
News Corp claims hackers only assisted in internal network security
The world’s “second best hacker” says he was hired under the table by media conglomerate News Corp, which owns the Wall Street Journal, MySpace, Fox News, and DirecTV.
Christopher Tarnovsky, testifying in Echostar v. NDS, says he was paid $20,000 — mailed inside electronics sent from Canada — to break into DISH Network’s satellite system and steal security codes necessary for pirating DISH Network’s satellite signals. EchoStar communications, which owned the DISH Network before a split in December of 2007, alleges that hackers from NDS Group, owned by News Corporation, employed hackers to flood the market with smart cards for satellite receivers designed specifically to steal paid DISH content. Both EchoStar and DISH, as separate entities, are plaintiffs in the case.
The suit alleges that the smart cards cost DISH $900M in lost sales and network repairs.
Tarnovsky says that while he was employed to develop “pirating software,” it was not used against DISH or any other rival – instead, it was designed to secure DirecTV’s network.
DISH attorneys said Tarnovsky constructed a device called “The Stinger” – which Tarnovsky admitted to doing – that was able to interface with any smart card, regardless of which company it was designed to work with. Tarnovsky says his actions with The Stinger were aboveboard, but DISH attorneys claimed that hackers and/or NDS employees used it to reprogram at least 50 DISH Network smart cards.
“I never got money for reprogramming Echostar cards,” Tarnovsky testified. “Someone is trying to set me up.”
Valleywag - valleywag.wordpress.com 
Recent Comments