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Kick Assiest Blog
Monday, 14 August 2006
Fox News VP emails on Gaza kidnapping
Mood:  chatty
Topic: Yahoo Chat Stuff

Fox News employees kidnapped: Around-the-clock updates

BIO: Steve Centanni
FOXNEWS VP emails on Gaza kidnapping

Please keep Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig in your thoughts and prayers.

FNCers Kidnapped In Gaza: "Pray For Their Release. I Will Keep You Posted" --Moody
FNC senior VP John Moody's internal message to Fox News personnel about the kidnapping:

"The rumors are true: two of our employees have been abducted in Gaza. We will report this fact via our Israel correspondents. Do NOT do any other segments on it. Do not book guests on this topic. Do not comment officially and of course, not on the air, about it. DO pray for their release. I will keep you posted."

Drudge readers: Click here for TVNewser's extensive coverage of the kidnapping

Posted by yaahoo_06iest at 12:01 AM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, 15 August 2006 8:38 AM EDT
State University of NY Reverses Stand on Dissenting Prof
Mood:  chatty
Topic: Yahoo Chat Stuff

SUNY Reverses Stand on Dissenting Prof.

The State University of New York at Fredonia has promoted embattled professor Stephen Kershnar to full professor -- a position it had denied him for publicly disagreeing with the school’s conduct policies and affirmative action practices.

"This is a tremendous victory not only for Stephen Kershnar, but also for professors at institutions across America,” stated Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which brought Kershnar’s situation to the public’s attention.

"Such unconstitutional attempts to dominate and control professors’ right to dissent must not be tolerated at our nation’s colleges and universities.”

As NewsMax reported earlier, Kershnar, an associate professor of philosophy, was nominated for promotion to full professor in January 2006, with strong support from his colleagues, department head, and top administrators.

Kershnar writes a bi-weekly column for the local newspaper, in which he has questioned Fredonia’s affirmative action practices and examined the lack of conservatives in higher education.

Specifically, he criticized Fredonia’s efforts to increase diversity by lowering standards for hiring and admissions.

In 2005, Kershnar publicly condemned a new rule targeting students who fail to report violations of the student conduct code. He was quoted in the Buffalo News saying the new policy would "turn the student population into a group of snitches.”

SUNY Fredonia President Dennis L. Hefner issued a letter to the university community defending the conduct policy against "media misrepresentations.” Kershnar e-mailed the Fredonia faculty e-mail list on the following day to say that he had criticized -- not misrepresented -- the policy.

On April 27, Hefner sent Kershnar a letter denying his promotion. Hefner explained that although Kershnar’s "teaching has been described as excellent,” he would not be promoted because of his "deliberate and repeated misrepresentations of campus policies and procedures ... to the media,” which Hefner claimed "impugned the reputation of SUNY Fredonia.”

When Kershnar offered to submit his writings to prior review for a year, Hefner suggested instead that Kershnar sign a contract requiring him to get "unanimous consent” from a university committee for all writing regarding the university.

Kershnar refused and contacted FIRE.

On July 7, FIRE wrote a letter to Hefner criticizing his actions. Hefner responded in a letter dated July 20 upholding the denial of promotion to Kershnar.

FIRE brought the events at SUNY Fredonia to public awareness on July 24. Within days, SUNY Fredonia administrators informed Kershnar that they would reevaluate his promotion.

And in a dramatic turn of events, Kershnar received a certified letter on August 11 informing him that his promotion was approved.

"There are no conditions whatsoever attached to his promotion, and he will begin the fall semester as a full professor,” according to a release from FIRE.

Said Lukianoff: "We are very pleased that SUNY Fredonia has seen the error of its ways.

"SUNY Fredonia was violating the First Amendment, its own contractual promises, and the canons of academic freedom. We hope that in the future universities will consider their duty to protect the marketplace of ideas before they set out to quash dissent.”

FIRE is a nonprofit educational foundation that unites civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals from across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of individual rights, due process, freedom of expression, academic freedom, and rights of conscience at our nation’s colleges and universities.

FIRE’s efforts to preserve freedom of expression at SUNY Fredonia can be viewed at thefire.org/fredonia. --- News Max.com ** SUNY Reverses Stand on Dissenting Prof.


Posted by yaahoo_06iest at 12:01 AM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, 15 August 2006 8:33 AM EDT
Sunday, 13 August 2006
Drudge Report Named 'One of the Most Influential Websites of All Time'
Mood:  chatty
Topic: Yahoo Chat Stuff

Websites that changed the world

Amazon used to be a large river in South America - but that was before the world wide web. This month the web is 15 years old and in that short time it has revolutionised the way we live, from shopping to booking flights, writing blogs to listening to music. Here, the Observer's Net specialist charts the web's remarkable early life and we tell the story of the 15 most influential websites to date. Tell us what you think of our choices here.

John Naughton - The Observer

Johannes Gutenberg took the idea of printing by moveable type and turned it into a publishing system. In doing so he changed the world. But he did not live to see the extent of the revolution he had brought about. If you'd told him in 1468 - the year he died - that the Bible he had published in 1455 would undermine the authority of the Catholic church, power the Renaissance and the Reformation, enable the Enlightenment and the rise of modern science, create new social classes and even change our concept of childhood, he would have looked at you blankly.

But there lives among us today a man who has done something similar, and survived to see the fruits of his work. He is Tim Berners-Lee, and he conceived a system for turning the internet into a publishing medium. Just over 15 years ago - on 6 August 1991, to be precise - he released the code for his invention on to the internet. He called it the World Wide Web, and had the inspired idea that it should be free so that anyone could use it.

And just about everyone did, with the result that the web grew exponentially. Today nobody really knows how big it is. At a recent conference, Yahoo's head of research and development put the size of the public web at 40 billion pages, but the size of the 'deep' web, the area where web pages are assembled on the fly and served up in response to clicked-upon links, is estimated to be between 400 and 750 times greater than the part that is indexed by search engines. Since you started reading this piece, thousands of pages have been added.

By any standards, the web represents a colossal change in our information environment. And the strange thing is that it has come about in just 15 years. Actually, most of it has happened in less than that, because the web only went mainstream in 1993, when the first graphical browsers - the computer programs we use to access the web - were released. So these are early days. We can no more envisage the long-term implications of what has happened than dear old Gutenberg could.

The strangest thing is how casually we have come to take it for granted. We buy books from Amazon, airline tickets from Easyjet and Ryanair, tickets for theatres and cinemas online, as if doing so were the most natural thing in the world. We check the opening times at the Louvre in Paris or the Museum of Modern Art in New York (or browse their collections) online. We check definitions (and spellings) in online dictionaries, look up stuff in Wikipedia, search for apartments to rent on Craigslist or a host of local lookalikes such as Daft.ie in Ireland. You can buy and sell just about anything (excluding body parts) on eBay. Children seeking pictures for school projects search for them on Google Images (and download them without undue concern for intellectual property rights). Holiday snaps escape from their shoeboxes and are published to the world on Flickr. Home movies likewise on YouTube. And of course anyone with doubts about a prospective blind date can do an exploratory check on Google before committing to an evening out with a total stranger.

All this we now take for granted. To get a handle on the scale of what has happened, think back to what the world was like 15 years ago. Amazon was a large river in South America. Ryanair was an Irish airline that flew to places nobody had ever heard of. eBay was a typo. Yahoo was a term from Gulliver's Travels. A googol was a very large number (one followed by a hundred zeroes). Classified ads were densely printed matter in newspapers. 'Encyclopedia' was a synonym for Encyclopedia Britannica. And if you wanted to read what your MP had said in the Commons yesterday you had to queue at the Stationery Office in London to buy Hansard. Oh, and there were quaint little shops in high streets called 'travel agents'.

To celebrate the 15th anniversary of the web we've assembled a list of sites that have become the virtual wallpaper of our lives. What the corresponding list will be like in 15 years' time is anyone's guess. As the man said, if you want to know the future, go buy a crystal ball. In the meantime, read on and wonder.

· John Naughton's history of the internet, A Brief History of the Future, is published by Phoenix at £7.99

1. eBay.com

Founded: Pierre Omidyar, 1995, US

Users: 168m

What is it? Auction and shopping site

You cannot buy fireworks, guns, franking machines, animals or lock-picking devices on eBay, the internet's premier auction site, but almost everything else is OK: sideburns, houses, used underwear and of course Pez dispensers.

Pez is where it is said to have all begun for eBay's ponytailed founder Pierre Omidyar when he responded to his fiancee's worries that she would no longer be able to expand her toy collection when they moved to Silicon Valley. Omidyar developed a car boot sale anyone could use wherever they were, and without the need for getting dressed. The name sprang from Echo Bay Technology Group, Omidyar's consultancy company, and the first sale was a broken laser pointer.

Things have moved on a little since then. We spend more time on eBay than any other internet site. There are more than 10 million users in the UK. And eBay is far from just a second-hand stall. New items are sold by global companies; many people have abandoned their jobs to eBay full time, and normally sane people fret about 'negative feedback' and being outbid by 'snipers'. eBay owns PayPal and Skype, making dealing almost effortless.
Simon Garfield

2. wikipedia.org

Founded: Jimmy Wales, 2001, US

Users: 912,000 visits per day

What is it? Online encyclopaedia

As a young boy growing up in Hunstville, Alabama, Jimmy Wales attended a one-room school, sharing his classes with only three other children. Here he spent 'many hours poring over encyclopaedias', and faced the familiar frustrations: their scope was conservative; they were hard to navigate and often out of date.

In January 2001 he created a solution. Wikipedia was a free online encyclopaedia and differed from its predecessors in one fundamental regard: it was open to everyone to read, and also to edit. If you had something to add - from a pedantic correction to an entire entry on your specialist subject - the Wiki template made this easy. The software enables entries to be updated within minutes of new developments. There is nothing you cannot find - how best to make glass, the use of the nappy in space exploration - and if something isn't there, you may wish to take matters into your own hands.

Like any fast-moving venture - the site attracts 2,000-plus page requests a second - it has not been slow to attract criticism. Occasionally a libellous article will lie undetected for months, as happened with an entry linking one of Robert Kennedy's aides with his assassination. But Wales says his creation is abused only rarely, and swiftly corrected by other users. 'Those who use Wikipedia a lot appreciate its true value and have learnt to trust it,' he says. 'Sometimes a prankster will substitute a picture of Hitler for George Bush, and within an hour someone would have changed it back.'
SG

3. napster.com

Founded: Shawn Fanning, 1999, US

Users: 500,000 paying subscribers

What is it? File sharing site

Shawn Fanning created Napster in 1999 while studying at Boston's Northeastern University, as a means of sharing music files with his fellow students. Of course, it was entirely illegal (home taping kills music, remember) and was quickly attacked by a mainstream music industry already struggling to make profits on its money-guzzling artists. Its popularity reached a peak in 2000 with over 70 million registered users before Fanning's company was forced to pay millions of dollars in backdated royalties: a move which bankrupted the original, free-to-use Napster the following year. By then, however, the premature leaking and sharing of hotly anticipated albums by some of the major labels' most bankable artists had proved to be a stimulant, not a thief, of sales once the CD version was released. The new Napster - effectively a renamed version of a pay-to-download MP3 site owned by the original Napster company's buyers, the German giant Bertelsmann- has never recaptured its original cool, precisely because it is now legitimate. What it did in its brief period of illegal notoriety was popularise the notion that making music freely available on the internet - through MySpace, one-off downloads or artist-sanctioned 'leaks' - does artists no harm at all; indeed, it's helped to launch the careers of many.
Lynsey Hanley

4. youtube.com

Founded: Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, 2005, US

Users: 100m clips watched a day

What is it? Video sharing site

When Chad Hurley and Steve Chen began working out of a garage in San Mateo in late 2004 to figure out an easy way to upload and share funny videos they'd taken at a dinner party, they had no idea just how huge an impact their creation would make. The former PayPal employees launched the user-friendly site in February 2005 and it has since become one of the most popular sites on the net, with YouTube claiming that 100 million clips are watched every day. Through the grassroots power of the internet and good word-of-mouth, the site quickly went from a place where people shared homemade video clips to users posting long-lost TV and film gems such as bloopers from Seventies game shows to ancient music videos. It has also taken off as a place for amateur film-makers to show off their talents - take David Lehre, a teenager whose MySpace: The Movie became such a popular clip he's already fielded job offers from major movie studios.

Not all television studios immediately embraced the idea of their archived copyrighted footage being shared. 'We're not here to steal,' insists Chen. 'When [US television network] NBC asked us to take something down, we did.' In fact, NBC only last week announced plans to work alongside YouTube, airing exclusive clips and trailers and eventually hoping to post episodes of The Office and Saturday Night Live on it. The company has had several offers to be bought out, but the pair swear they will not sell out. They continue to work out of their San Mateo loft, overseeing 27 employees and developing ways to make the site easier to use while whirling lucrative deals with studios.
Gillian Telling

5. blogger.com

Founded: Evan Williams, 1999, US

Users: 18.5m unique visitors

What is it? Weblog publishing system

There weren't too many computers lying around in the cornfields of Nebraska in the 1970s when Evan Williams was growing up. But he was drawn to them when he found them. He was also drawn west, to California in the 1990s. Williams founded Pyra Labs with two friends. At first it made project-management software for companies. It was not glamorous. Then it made Blogger and changed the world.

'The funny thing was I actually hesitated before working on Blogger because I didn't see the commercial applications,' says Williams. 'We had started a company and we needed to make money. We didn't see how this little hobbyist activity was going to make anyone money.'

The little hobbyist activity was blogging, the art of keeping a weblog - of diarising, theorising, satirising, fictionalising your life and observations online. It had already taken off among the tech fraternity in the Nineties, but it required building and maintaining your own website; the luddites were excluded. Williams created a tool that made self-publishing online as user-friendly as word-processing. It is hard to exaggerate the importance of this innovation. It didn't just create a new form of creative expression, it turned the media upside down.

Content was once made by companies for passive consumption by people. After Blogger, people were the content. They wrote about and read about their friends, their opinions, their cats. (There was a lot about cats in the early blogs.) None had a huge audience but collectively they were massive. 'Now you see TV networks saying: "We've gotta get on the web because that's where the audience is,"' says Williams.

There is no accurate count of the number of blogs in existence now. There are millions. One is created every minute. The revolution might have been possible without Blogger but it would have taken everyone a lot longer.

'Something like it would have existed anyway,' says Williams. 'And lots of things like it do exist. It was a combination of helping push an idea as well as just being in the right place at the right time when the idea was right.'
Rafael Behr

6. friendsreunited.com

Founded: Steve and Julie Pankhurst, 1999, UK

Users: 15m

What is it? School reunion site

In July 2000, as the dreams of the internet boom crumbled around them, a husband-and-wife team were busy launching a rough and ready web phenomenon. Friends Reunited, which was sold to ITV for £120m last December, was Julie Pankhurst's brainchild. While pregnant, she became obsessed with finding out what her old friends had been up to since they left school. Her husband Steve, a computer programmer, had been brainstorming with his business partner Jason Porter for an original internet-based idea, and Julie suggested a website to cater for her newfound obsession. It took her some time to convince them. 'In the end,' says Steve, 'I designed Friends Reunited just to shut her up.'

The site took off slowly, getting half a dozen hits per day, but everything changed at the start of 2001 when its lone server collapsed. 'The Steve Wright show on Radio 2 had made us their website of the day. Tens of thousands of people had tried to access the site at the same time.' Within a month membership rose from 3,000 to 19,000; the couple were working 18-hour days. Friends Reunited quickly became a household name and membership soared into the millions.
Killian Fox

7. drudgereport.com

Founded: Matt Drudge, 1994, US

Users: 8-10m page views per day

What is it? News site

What began as a gossipy email newsletter has, since its first post in 1994, developed into one of the most powerful media outlets in American politics. Today the Drudge Report has evolved into a website, drudgereport.com, and its threadbare, no-frills design belies the scale of its influence. It received an estimated 3.5 billion hits in the last 12 months; visitors regard it as the first port of call for breaking news.

Fedora-wearing founder Matt Drudge monitors TV and the internet for rumours and stories which he posts as headlines on his site. For the most part these are direct links to traditional news sites, though occasionally Drudge writes the stories himself. In 1998 he was the first to break news of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Named this year as one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people, the 38-year-old regards himself as a maverick newsman working free from the demands of editors and advertisers. Others, particularly critics from the left, view his reportage as biased towards conservatives, careless, malicious and frequently prone to error.

A report in 1997, alleging that White House assistant Sidney Blumenthal physically abused his wife, generated a $30m lawsuit against Drudge, which was dropped in 2001. In June 2004, Drudge apologised for a February 'world exclusive' claiming that John Kerry had had an affair with an intern.

Drudge has been labelled a 'threat to democracy' and an 'idiot with a modem' as well as 'the kind of bold, entrepreneurial, free-wheeling, information-oriented outsider we need more of in this country' (by Camille Paglia); his importance in the US media is undisputed.
KF

8. myspace.com

Founded: Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, 2003, US

Users: 100m

What is it? Social networking site

When business-school alumnus Chris DeWolfe set up the social networking site MySpace with his partner, ex-band member and film studies graduate Tom Anderson, three years ago, there was little indication that the one-stop online friend-making shop would soon boast 100 million members and more page visits in Britain than the BBC. The pair envisaged a site that would bring together all the qualities of existing online communities such as Friendster, Tribe.net and LiveJournal, with added features including classified adverts and events planning.

They got the formula just right: the MySpace-opolis is growing by 240,000 a day, making it the fourth most-visited website in the world. DeWolfe believes that the key to the site's success is its founders' rapport with the people who use it. 'We looked at it from the point of view of how people live their lives,' he says.

One of those features is the ability to upload and listen to music, which has attracted 2.2 million new bands and artists to the site, some of whom - most famously Lily Allen and Arctic Monkeys - can attribute their chart success to having spread the word through MySpace.

MySpace's parent company, Intermix, was bought by Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp last year for $580m, causing consternation among some of the music world's more politicised acts, but no large-scale boycott. The site is simply too valuable and effective - and ubiquitous - to ignore.
LH

9. amazon.com

Founded: Jeff Bezos, 1994, US

Users: More than 35m customers in over 250 countries

What is it? Online retailer, primarily of books, CDs and DVDs

The earth's biggest bookstore was originally called Cadabra, but Jeff Bezos thought again after his lawyer misheard it as 'cadaver'. He chose Amazon as something large and unstoppable and so, with current annual revenues of $8bn, it has proved. It was just a trickle to begin with though: the first office was in a Seattle suburb with desks made out of old doors. But it quickly became the headline act of the dotcom miracle and Bezos was Time magazine's man of the year in 1999. Amazon's continued dominance rests on price-slashing that would make Wal-Mart wince, and a reputation for reliability. Though selling books (and now almost everything else) on a vast scale, it has tried never to forget the value of intimacy.
Tim Adams

10. slashdot.org

Founded: Rob Malda, 1997, US

Users: 5.5m per month

What is it? Technology news website and internet forum

'I'm just a geek that likes to poke around with hardware,' says Rob Malda. His site, Slashdot.org, hosts news and discussion for techies and is one of the most visited websites in the world. Time magazine included him in its top 100 innovators, stating: 'Malda has taken the idea of what news can be, hacked it open and rebuilt it for the internet age.'

Most of the site is written by users; posts include a short synopsis paragraph, a link to the original story and a lengthy discussion sometimes running to 10,000 comments a day. Slashdot pioneered this user-driven content, and influenced sites including Google News, Guardian Unlimited and Wikipedia. In 2002 the site leaked the ruling of a court case involving Microsoft before the verdict had even been delivered to Microsoft or the US government. There is also the Slashdot effect, where a site is swamped by heavy traffic from a Slashdot link and its server collapses.

In 1997, 21-year-old Malda started what we would now call a blog, hosted on his user account at university. As the site picked up users he divided his time between college, paid work and the site. 'It was a blur. There were many nights when I did not sleep.' Two years later Andover bought Slashdot for $5m, shared between Malda, co-founder Jeff 'Hemos' Bates and other partners. They also shared $7m in stock between them. In 2000 VA Linux (now VA Software) bought Andover for $900m. Slashdot now has 10 employees dedicated to maintaining the site, most of them based in California. Malda has remained in Michigan, where he grew up and went to college. He is director of Slashdot. He proposed to his wife Kathleen on the site in 2002.
Katie Toms

11. salon.com

Founded: David Talbot, 1995, US

Users: Between 2.5 and 3.5m unique visitors per month

What is it? Online magazine and media company Salon grew out of a strike. When the San Francisco Examiner was shut for a couple of weeks in 1994 a few of its journalists taught themselves HTML and had a go at doing a newspaper with new technology. They found the experience liberating, and David Talbot, the Examiner's arts editor, subsequently gave up his job and launched the kind of online paper he had always wanted to work for. Salon was originally a forum for discussing books, but the editors quickly realised it had to be more journalistic than that. They aimed at creating a 'smart tabloid', not afraid to be mischievous while maintaining a rigour with news. Talbot believes that online journalism came of age with the death of Princess Diana and the Lewinsky scandal. It proved with those events that it could be nimbler and more gossipy, it could update itself continually and, crucially, let readers join in. Salon's Table Talk forum established a new relationship between a news outfit and its audience, letting readers write themselves into the story.

Salon was not afraid of muck-raking. When Talbot decided to run a story about Henry Hyde, who was to sit in judgment of Bill Clinton after the Starr report, he was roundly criticised not just by the entrenched Washington media but also by some on his own staff. The story concerned Hyde's extramarital affair of 30 years before, and the more august sections of the American media, not to mention the right-wing impeachers of the President, thought this was beyond the pale. Talbot recalls how Salon 'got bomb threats, I received death threats... [but] I think if as a new organisation that comes into the world, a new media operation, you don't take risks with stories that no one else does, then what's the point?'

For all its journalistic success, Salon has always struggled financially. A couple of times the site has nearly gone under; on one occasion Talbot was forced to fire his wife who ran a women's page. A subscription system saved it, along with the growth in online advertising. These days Talbot sees Salon's competitors as the big news organisations, the New York Times and so on, who have strong online presence. Having shown a few of them how it's done, Salon now faces a daily battle to stay ahead of the game.
TA

12. craigslist.org

Founded: Craig Newmark, 1995, US

Users: 4bn page views per month

What is it? A centralised network of online urban communities, featuring free classified advertisements and forums

Craigslist is one of the most deceptively simple websites on the internet. It is also one of the most powerful. It is - pretty much - simply a free noticeboard. But its astonishing popularity has given it immense power. Want to rent an apartment? Sell a car? Find a job? Meet someone to spend the night with? Craiglist will provide the answers. For free. It has revolutionised urban living in America. It has also undercut one of the main reasons for newspapers: classified advertising. As nearly all Craigslist's content is free, it rarely censors ads and its readers number in the millions, it is far more useful to post an advert on the site than in your local newspaper. Thus a huge decline in newspaper ads and revenue, triggering cost-cutting which will see reporters tossed on to the scrap heap... and the end of a free press and democracy as we know it (if the critics are to be believed).

The website was founded by Craig Newmark, an ubergeek with a hippyish mentality. It started as a simple email that he would send around listing various events going on in San Francisco. From such humble beginnings Craigslist has grown into a multi-million-dollar business. Yet Newmark refuses to sell his company or charge for every ad.

Why should you care? Craigslist is all over the world - and coming to your home town soon.
Paul Harris

13. google.com

Founded: Larry Page and Sergey Brin, 1998, US

Users: A billion search requests per day

What is it? Search engine and media corporation

Its name is listed as a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary. It commands the largest internet search engine in the world. It is the fastest-growing company in history and its founders are worth almost $13bn each.

The search method devised by Larry Page and Sergey Brin was instrumental to Goggle's success. Rather than ranking results according to how many times the search term appeared on a page, their system measured the frequency with which a website was referenced by other sites. Another key factor was the site's stripped-down design, which made it speedier and more accessible than its competitors.

From such plain foundations a gigantic empire has sprung and is branching out into email (with Gmail), news (Google News), price comparison (Froogle), cartography (Google Maps), literature (with the much contested Google Book Search), free telephony (Google Talk), and, most strikingly, Google Earth, an incredibly detailed virtual globe. Google styles itself as a laidback, hippyish organisation but its founding motto, 'Don't Be Evil', is already being tested: the compromise it reached with China over censorship has proved particularly contentious.
KF

14. yahoo.com

Founded: David Filo and JerryYang, 1994, US

Users: 400m

What is it? Internet portal and media corporation

It receives an average of 3.4bn page hits a day, making it the single most visited website on the internet, but in recent years Yahoo! has been eclipsed by Google. Both companies were launched on a very small scale by Stanford University graduates and, very soon the portal that Jerry Yang and David Filo had started as a hobby was en route to becoming the most popular search engine on the web. On the back of its early success, Yahoo! (an acronym for 'Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle') branched out into email, instant messaging, news, gaming, online shopping and an array of other services.

It also started buying up other companies such as Geocities, eGroups and the web radio company Broadcast.com. Yahoo! survived the internet collapse at the start of the decade and brought former Warner Bros chief exec Terry Semel on board in 2001 to navigate the difficult waters of the post-boom period. Semel began to address the challenge of making money out of the internet without relying on advertising revenue alone. Google notwithstanding, Yahoo! is still very much a contender.
KF

15. easyjet.com

Founded: Stelios

Haji-Ioannou, 1995, UK

Users: 30m passengers last year

What is it?: Budget airline

It's easy to forget what it was like back in the old days, when we didn't just pay a tenner, pitch up at Luton and pop over to Rome for the weekend. We mini-breaked in Bournemouth. Travelling to Scotland was an all-day affair. Airlines issued quaint old-fashioned things such as meals. And tickets. And seats.

And then along came Stelios. That's Stelios as in Haji-Ioannou, although he now, alongside Delia and Jamie and Sven, belongs in that rare category - the surnameless celebrity. He's also that other elusive British beast - the celebrity entrepreneur. In 1995, after borrowing £30m from his dad, a shipping magnate, he leased two second-hand Boeings and began selling flights to Scotland for £29 each way.

EasyJet was the first low-cost British airline and, presciently, the first to start taking bookings over the internet, although, as Stelios admits, he wasn't won over straight away.

'We started off as something very obscure like 1145678.com. And I said: "This is never going to fill the planes. It's just for nerds." Then some time in 1997 we bought the domain easyjet.com for about £1,000 and put up a proper website. At that time we had the telephone number in big letters on the side of the plane. And we put a different telephone number on the website. Week after week I watched how quickly the numbers were growing and that gave me the confidence in April 1997 to launch a booking site.'

It was, he says, the neatest and simplest way: 'you outsource the work to the customer'. And it turned him into an internet evangelical. The first company he set up after easyJet was easyInternetcafe and all 15 companies in the easyGroup have some sort of web component.
Carole Cadwalladr

· Do you have a favorite website? Tell us what it is and why here.

UK Guardian Observer ~ John Naughton ** Websites that changed the world


Posted by yaahoo_06iest at 12:01 AM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, 15 August 2006 5:33 AM EDT
Saturday, 12 August 2006
Dead Air America's Sam Seder Makes Desperate Pitch
Mood:  silly
Topic: Lib Loser Stories

SAVE MY SHOW!

AAR's Seder Makes Desperate Pitch

As an increasingly chaotic atmosphere sets in behind the scenes at troubled liberal talk radio network Air America, at least one host is taking matters into his own hands. For Sam Seder, it's an eleventh-hour attempt to save his own neck.

Will it work?

So far, Seder, of the Majority Report show heard weeknights on the network, has survived the departure of former co-host Janeane Garofalo, but that may not be the case for long.

In addition to making on-air pleas to keep his show, Seder and a website affiliated with the program have kicked off an email campaign that asks fans to write supportive letters to Air America's management.

One problem: with nearly all of Air America's on-site executive team now missing in action, it's hard to determine exactly who would read any pro-Seder emails. Instead, they're far more likely to fall into a cyber-black hole.

He's also enlisted high profile help, including Democrat Party wonder boy Kos. In the subsequent DailyKos reader discussion, liberals dissect Air America's programming, including this analysis from poster "Splicer":

The Majority Report notwithstanding, I think the network as a whole has struggled mightily to find a coherent voice since they first signed on the air. I thought it was a mistake to emphasize so much comedy; the programs often seem more like people auditioning for their next gig than something meant for the long haul.

Here in NYC, we currently have Rachel Maddow in the morning who I think is fine the way she is but is saddled with this character Kent Jones who is apparently doing a lot of the "comedy" writing, delivering the news in a way that screams, "Hey, Jon Stewart, I want to work on the Daily Show". Uh, no, Kent, they have talent.

Is Jerry Springer still on the air there? That program was a mistake and smells of some genius executive making hiring decisions based upon what a consultant tells him.

I've liked Al Franken from the beginning but think that he was better with Katherine than solo. She seemed to always bring things back to the topic rather than let them veer off into tangentland.

Randi Rhodes can be entertaining but it always seems like I'm listening to the same show over and over again. Same sorts of callers and the recorded bits always in the same place coming out of a top of the hour break. Ugh, formats.

Now, as to the Majority Report. I like Sam and like the way that he mixes the sarcastic humor with the vitriol. Janeane always grated on my nerves because, in a weird way, her personality reminded me of Rosie O'Donnell - always having to not only have the last word but the definitive word on everything. I always got the feeling that the odd terminology she would use was because she happened to be reading a book on the subject that week which, of course, made her an expert.

Meanwhile, the company seems to have a hard time keeping its own website updated, as it still lists both Garofalo and Seder as program co-hosts.

While the Radio Equalizer has a hard time faulting anybody for trying to hang on to his job, this energy may be better spent trying to cut a deal somewhere else.

For Air America's hosts, it's a tough decision: either hang on until the ship sinks, or jump off now and quickly look for a new home.

The Radio Equalizer ~ David A Lunde ** Save My Show!


Posted by yaahoo_06iest at 12:01 AM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, 15 August 2006 9:46 AM EDT
Friday, 11 August 2006
Teens Cope With Unwanted Pregnancies Better Than Abortions, Study Shows
Mood:  loud
Topic: Yahoo Chat Stuff

Teens Cope With Unwanted Pregnancies Better Than Abortions, Study Shows

Bowling Green, OH -- A new study published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence refutes a long-standing contention that teenagers are better able to handle an abortion than dealing with an unplanned pregnancy. The study finds that adolescent girls who have an abortion are five times more likely to seek help for psychological and emotional problems than those who keep their baby.

Dr. Priscilla Coleman, a research psychologist at Bowling Green State University, led the study.

Coleman also found that teenagers who have abortions instead of carrying the pregnancy to term were also over three times more likely to report subsequent trouble sleeping, and nine times more likely to report subsequent marijuana use.

To factor out other reasons that may have prompted the need for psychological help, sleep difficulties or drug use, Coleman examined 17 other variables such as prior mental health history and family factors.

That helped narrow down the study to make sure it focused only on the results after the abortion or birth decision.

Data for the study came from a federally-funded longitudinal study of adolescents from throughout the U.S. who participated in two series of interviews in 1995 and 1996.

About 76 percent of girls who had abortions and 80 percent of girls who gave birth were between the ages of 15 and 19 during the survey and the rest were younger teenagers.

Previous studies have found that younger abortion patients may be more likely to experience difficulties coping after abortion compared to older women. That may be because they are more likely to be pressured into unwanted abortions or to undergo abortions later in the pregnancy, leading to more physical and emotional risk.

A 2004 survey of American and Russian women published in the Medical Science Monitor found that 64 percent of American women reported that they felt pressured into abortion.

Coleman said that for teens, the pressure probably comes from the fact that they are more likely to be perceived as unready to be parents and that abortion is often seen by those around them as the best solution.

"When women feel forced into abortion by others or by life circumstances, negative post-abortion outcomes become more common," she wrote. "Adolescents are generally much less prepared to assume the responsibility of parenthood and are logically the recipients of pressure to abort."

Coleman pointed out that, while having a child as a teen may be problematic, "the risks of terminating seem to be even more pronounced."

"The scientific evidence is now strong and compelling," Coleman said. "Abortion poses more risks to women than giving birth."

In a statement LifeNews.com obtained, Dr. David Reardon, the director of the Elliot Institute, said that Coleman's study was particularly important because it examines pregnancy "wantedness."

"Over the last six years, numerous studies have conclusively linked higher rates of mental illness and behavioral problems associated with abortion compared to childbirth," Reardon, who has contributed to more than a dozen studies examining psychological outcomes after abortion, said.

"But abortion advocates have generally dismissed these findings, insisting that while women who abort may fare worse than women who give birth to planned children, they may fare better than the important subgroup of women who carry unintended pregnancies to term," Reardon explained. "Coleman's study addresses this argument and shows that the facts don't support abortion advocates' speculations."

The results of the study are also important because about one-fourth of the abortions that take place annually in the United States are done on teenagers, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a Planned Parenthood affiliate.

As such, the study shows that teenagers should be advised to not have an abortion in order to avoid both short and long-term emotional and psychological complications.

Source: Priscilla K. Coleman, "Resolution of Unwanted Pregnancy During Adolescence Through Abortion Versus Childbirth: Individual and Family Predictors and Psychological Consequences," Journal of Youth and Adolescence (2006).

Life News.com ~ Steven Ertelt ** Teens Cope With Unwanted Pregnancies Better Than Abortions, Study Shows


Posted by yaahoo_06iest at 12:01 AM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, 15 August 2006 7:09 AM EDT
Thursday, 10 August 2006
The Real Cause of Global Warming, THE SUN!
Mood:  bright
Topic: Lib Loser Stories

It's The Photo Algore Doesn't Want You To See...

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

Click for a stunning photo and explanation of how THE SUN, not little ole humans on Earth, really causes global warming

(Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.)

An Erupting Solar Prominence from SOHO
Credit: SOHO-EIT Consortium, ESA, NASA

Explanation: Our Sun is still very active. In the year 2000, our Sun went though Solar Maximum, the time in its 11-year cycle where the most sunspots and explosive activities occur. Sunspots, the Solar Cycle, and solar prominences are all caused by the Sun's changing magnetic field. Pictured above is a solar prominence that erupted in 2002 July, throwing electrons and ions out into the Solar System. The above image was taken in the ultraviolet light emitted by a specific type of ionized helium, a common element on the Sun. Particularly hot areas appear in white, while relatively cool areas appear in red. Our Sun should gradually quiet down until Solar Minimum occurs, and the Sun is most quiet. No one can precisely predict when Solar Minimum will occur, although some signs indicate that it has started already!

Tomorrow's picture: blue horse


Posted by yaahoo_06iest at 1:20 AM EDT
Updated: Thursday, 10 August 2006 1:50 AM EDT
Wednesday, 9 August 2006
The Demented-crat Primary = Conservative Christmas in August
Mood:  party time!
Topic: Lib Loser Stories

Lieberman loses, libtards claim he was a "right wing hero"  - McKinney is out... claims "voter irregularities"... IN A DEM PRIMARY! Thanks for the election presents, libtards!!!

AN 'INDEPENDENT' JOE

Lieberman Loses Connecticut Primary Bid
'Irresponsibile and inconsistent with my principles' to drop out
*PAPER: Win for the wackadoo wing
**PEYSER: Lieberman isn't listening
***DICK MORRIS: JOE WILL RISE AGAIN

McKinney Out
*VIDEO: McKinney Sings
**Alleges voter irregularities
***Supporters, Media Scuffle

The clueless looney-bird leftists made actual chat posts like "Your right wing hero lost" when describing Lieberman. They then called us "nazis" and justified their punishment for Lieberman's "thought crime."

And I asked in chat a mere 12 hours ago... "Could the Dems claim 'voter irregularities / fraud / cheating' in a Dem primary runoff?" Well, I guess Cynthia McKinney (an african-American, female congresswoman) can.

Libtards are climbing yet another step on the derangement ladder. I haven't seen them this delusional since they lost in 2004!


Posted by yaahoo_06iest at 2:55 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, 9 August 2006 3:30 PM EDT
Tuesday, 8 August 2006
Five-year-old boy has 60-mile train adventure
Mood:  surprised
Topic: Odd Stuff

Boy, 5, has train adventure

A five-year-old boy took a 60-mile train ride because he wanted a real-life Thomas the Tank adventure.

Ben Ford was walking down the road ahead of his mum and dad when he disappeared.

He walked alone for half a mile and jumped on a train. He got off at Taunton in Somerset - 60 miles from his home in Teignmouth, Devon.

Two girls spotted him in a car park and alerted police.

According to the Mirror Dad David said: "Ben is mad about trains and Thomas the Tank Engine so he probably thought he was in the middle of some kind of Thomas adventure.

"It is still quite a long way to the station for a lad of his age and he had to cross major roads and go all the way to the bottom of town. Ben clearly wanted an adventure but he gave us all a huge fright. For those hours that he was missing I just thought 'if he is gone forever I don't want to exist any more'."

David and wife Sam had searched
everywhere with neighbours and called police.

Neighbour Joanne Gartside, 37, said: "All hell broke loose round here. There were swarms of police officers and dogs and a helicopter."

PC Austin Clarkson said: "The little boy was fine - he sat and watched the trains while we made inquiries."

He then boarded a service to Exeter St David's station, where Ben was reunited with his parents.

Ananova.com UK ** Boy, 5, has train adventure


Posted by yaahoo_06iest at 4:19 AM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, 8 August 2006 4:37 AM EDT
al-Reuters ~ First Casualty Photo
Mood:  caffeinated
Topic: Lib Loser Stories

Posted by yaahoo_06iest at 3:13 AM EDT
Chief of Naval Ops accepts New EA-18G ''Growler''
Mood:  special
Topic: News

Full Image: Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), Adm. Mike Mullen, delivers remarks during the EA-18G Growler roll out ceremony held at the Boeing Company in St. Louis. The EA-18 Growler is being developed to replace the fleet's current carrier-based EA-6B Prowler. The next-generation electronic attack aircraft, for the U.S. Navy, combines the combat-proven F/A-18 Super Hornet with a state-of-the-art electronic warfare avionics suite. The EA-18G will feature an airborne electronic attack suite based on Northrop Grumman's Improved Capability III system, a radically new jamming and information warfare system. The EA-18G is expected to enter initial operational capability in 2009.

CNO Accepts New EA-18G Growler

From Chief of Naval Operations Public Affairs

ST. LOUIS, Mo. -- Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Adm. Mike Mullen accepted on behalf of the Navy the EA-18G Growler in a formal roll-out ceremony at The Boeing Company's facility here Aug 3.

The Growler will replace its aging predecessor, the EA-6B Prowler, as the Navy’s air platform for electronic warfare.

“The EA-18G Growler is a first-class aircraft with a key mission at a critical time in our history,” said Mullen.

Naval aviation, he explained, has been a very integral part of the nation’s defense in both peace and war.

“As we have seen in operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, naval aviation brings revolutionary capabilities to the fight and demonstrates again and again the enduring criticality of naval air power,” said Mullen.

(View All Photos) Guests get a closer look at the EA-18G Growler during its roll out ceremony held at the Boeing Company in St. Louis. The EA-18 Growler is being developed to replace the fleet's current carrier-based EA-6B Prowler. The next-generation electronic attack aircraft, for the U.S. Navy, combines the combat-proven F/A-18 Super Hornet with a state-of-the-art electronic warfare avionics suite. The EA-18G will feature an airborne electronic attack suite based on Northrop Grumman's Improved Capability III system, a radically new jamming and information warfare system. The EA-18G is expected to enter initial operational capability in 2009. >>>>>

The Growler's speed, range and robust self-defense systems will serve as force multipliers for the joint force, Mullen noted.

"Its pilots and crews will employ Growler's systems not just to jam signals," said the CNO, "but to control all aspects of the electromagnetic spectrum to protect our troops and engage our enemies."

Program managers and engineers saved the Navy billions of dollars, Mullen argued, by using innovative methods such as testing cutting edge technology in existing aircraft and then using the already proven F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet’s airframe to create the aircraft.

“Less than three years ago, we signed the contract, and here we are today, on schedule and under budget with a new electronic attack aircraft that exceeds every performance measure,” said Mullen.

Mullen praised the men and women flying electronic warfare missions for the Navy in the war on terrorism and stressed the importance of getting Growler to the fleet.

"This roll-out comes none too soon," said Mullen, "because as we speak, the Growler's predecessors are themselves flying vital missions over Iraq and Afghanistan, and they need to be replaced as soon as possible.

"I recently visited some of our Prowler crews in Iraq. I can tell you that they are superb and, like all the Sailors and Marines I met there, are doing remarkable work. It is hard, grueling, vital work. In some ways and in some places, the most vital we are doing."

The CNO also acknowledged the hard work of all those involved in designing and building the Growler.

“You can be justifiably proud of this fine aircraft you have provided our Navy and nation," said Mullen. "Right now, day in and day out, naval aviators bet their lives on your aircraft, flying at sea, far from land, and in combat over some of the most remote places on earth. They are succeeding in their tough missions because of the terrific aircraft you have built for them.”

The Growler must still undergo test and evaluation, beginning with a first flight planned in the next two weeks, a month earlier than expected.

For related news, visit the Chief of Naval Operations Navy NewsStand page at www.news.navy.mil/local/cno/.

Navy News ~ Chief of Naval Operations Public Affairs ** CNO Accepts New EA-18G Growler


Posted by yaahoo_06iest at 2:30 AM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, 8 August 2006 2:58 AM EDT

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