How They Found and Killed the Bloodiest Narcoterrorist In the World
This Thursday, Mono Jojoy was killed in his secret jungle base. He was the military boss of narcoterrorist group FARC, responsible for the deaths and kidnappings of thousands of people in Colombia. Caught and killed thanks to a boot.
Víctor Julio Suárez aka Jorge Briceño Suárez aka Mono Jojoy, born in 1953, was the big boss of the military organization of FARC, the so called Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. The objective of this Marxist-Leninist 11,000-man-strong guerrilla is to overthrown the government through terrorist acts, financing themselves with drug traffic, kidnaps and extortion of all kinds of innocent people.
Last Thursday, Mono Jojoy was at his secret headquarters in La Macarena, an area deep into the Colombian jungle. It was a normal day at the 984-foot long base. Nobody expected what was about to happen, which is probably the reason why they didn't use the escape tunnels that go out of the military bunker, at the heart of the base.
Bad Feet
After all, they all were sure that nobody knew where this base was, hidden from US spy satellites by the thick foliage. And in any case, they probably thought that neither the Colombian nor the US intelligence could ever learn where Mono Jojoy was located at any given time.
Mono Jojoy was probably doing whatever it is that bloody terrorists do when they are not planning how to screw the lives of people who don't give a damn about their revolution.
And taking care of his poor feet.
He suffered from diabetes which, combined with the rigors of the life in the jungle, had caused painful injuries on his feet. That was the reason why he had to order a new pair of special boots. And that was when Operation Sodoma started and his death begun.
The guerrilla command sent a message asking for these special boots, which was caught by Colombian intelligence. The Colombians were able to intercept the boots and rig one of them with GPS circuitry. When Mono got them, his fate was sealed.
Air attack
The Colombians made sure that he got the boots and started to track the GPS signal. They knew exactly where he was, and that's when they decided to launch the attack against the base.
57 aircraft, jetfighter and helicopters, attacked the complex with fifty bombs, preparing the way for the Colombian ground troops, who took over the camp with little opposition. In fact, only one of their explosives-sniffing dog died in the attack.
Soon after arriving to the camp, the Colombian commandos found Mono Jojoy's body (in the image), along with other members of the FARC's elite.
All because of bad feet and a rigged boot. [El Mundo (in Spanish)]
Send an email to Jesus Diaz, the author of this post, at jesus@gizmodo.com.
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Tuesday, September 28, 2010
How They Found and Killed the Bloodiest Narcoterrorist In the World
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Why is Ubuntu Succeeding Where Linspire Failed? via Datamation.com
What Linux purists will likely never admit is that in 2005, Linspire's CNR was the definitive app store for any platform. Evil or wonderful in community perception, CNR made locating, installing and uninstalling software mind-numbingly simple to do. This is not merely my opinion. I found this to be true based on having people who barely knew how to check email using CNR back then. These users couldn't get over how easy it was to add/remove software. And finding out about new applications was surprisingly intuitive as well.
In addition, Linspire made funds available to a number of open source projects, ranging from Kopete to the ReiserFS file system. So while they were not loved by much of the Linux community by any stretch, they did appear willing to support projects used within their Linux distribution.
Where things get fuzzy
From a more traditional Linux users point of view, Linspire crossed lines that many Linux enthusiasts were simply not happy with. These issues include:
1. Linspire was a 'for sale' product. To make matters more controversial, Linspire was driving people to buying the CNR warehouse (aka CNR) memberships as well. This meant users were basically subscribing to a service for ease of use, while accessing open source software along side of proprietary applications.
2. Mixed licenses used. Linspire's CNR was not open source software at the time, in addition to other restricted/proprietary codecs being made available with this Linux distro.+
3. Later deals with Microsoft with regard to IP licenses, a few years later. Worse was the statement in which the company expressed the idea that a Microsoft embrace would provide for a better Linux. Clearly, the Linux community did not share this assessment.
4. Freespire – Too little, too late. By the time Freespire finally found its way forward, we still found a lack of community involvement at the level most users would have liked to have seen. And to the Linux purists, the mixed licensing bundled with easy access to proprietary, Microsoft-blessed code was a major negative. Yet oddly, we're okay with allowing people to do basically the same thing on Ubuntu with Linux distributions like Linux Mint? A bit of a paradox, no?
Flash forward to Ubuntu
The two single biggest things I see Ubuntu doing differently from Linspire is keeping the community involved at all costs, and making sure of constant availability.
Yes, there are people who are paid to work on the Ubuntu project fulltime, but at the end of the day you won't find proprietary codecs or video drivers installed by default. To some this may seem like we're splitting hairs, yet this is a huge deal to many users in the Linux community.
Availability is key. Ubuntu is made available at no cost to anyone. Development is generally considered cutting edge, sourced from the latest work on Debian and tweaked to meet the needs of the most die-hard Ubuntu enthusiast.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
what-not-to-say-when-pulled-over-by-a-cop: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance
In what he calls an "educational video" that's widely circulated on YouTube, comedian Chris Rock offers advice on what to do when you get pulled over for a traffic violation.
"Obey the law" he says. "Stop immediately" and "stay in your car with your hands on the wheel." Finally, "if your woman is mad at you, leave her at home. There's nothing she'd like to see more than you getting your [you-know-what] kicked."
More from MarketWatch.com:
• New Credit-Card Tricks Snare Consumers
It's a dead-on spoof of a hard truth: Respect authority. If you don't, you increase the odds of a pricey ticket.
[Click here to check auto rates in your area.]
"Everything in that video is absolutely true," said Sgt. Matthew Koep of the South Plainfield, N.J., Police Department. "It's funny, but it's accurate."
Citizens who are generally law-abiding are likely to come into contact with the police only under two circumstances: If you're a crime victim or you get pulled over for a traffic violation.
[See the Most Stolen Vehicles in the United States]
Police officers are not out to make your life miserable, but to make sure you're following the rules of the road and not endangering yourself or those around you.
With a few exceptions, and an egregious traffic violation is top among them, cops aren't mandated to write tickets. Most would rather send you on your way with a friendly warning -- that can save you time and money.
But handle the situation with an aggressive or arrogant attitude and you can expect to squeeze an expensive court date into your busy schedule.
Play Nice
First rule: don't argue.
"I get this all the time," said Karen Rittorno, a nine-year veteran with the Chicago Police Department. "'What are you stopping me for? I didn't do nothing.' If they try to take charge of the traffic stop, they're not going to get out of it without a ticket," she said. "We ask the questions, not them."
Accept that the police have caught you doing something that's against the law, such as speeding or gliding through a stop sign.
"All we do is react to what people do when you pull them over," said Dennis Fanning, a homicide detective and veteran officer with the Los Angeles Police Department. "We don't instigate the stuff, but we will react to you. The situation will escalate or de-escalate depending on how that person reacts."
To argue with cops is akin to calling them idiots. Don't do that. "That's implying that I pulled you over for no reason and that bothers me," Koep said.
Keep It Honest
Don't lie, either. Cops are trained to note the human characteristics of lying, including twitching and looking to the left, and they know the right questions to ask to suss out the truth.
Fanning estimates that nine out of 10 people lie to him. "It's an attack on our intelligence," he said.
Moreover, the truth can set you free. Koep recalled an incident when he pulled a young guy over for speeding.
"He looks straight at me and says, 'You know, officer, I wasn't even paying attention. I just had the best date of my life. I just met my future bride. I'm just on cloud nine right now.'
"The guy was completely serious," Koep said. "How are you going to write that guy up after that? Who makes that kind of stuff up?"
Of course, don't use pejoratives when addressing the police, unless you're eager for a ticket. But other words may backfire, too. Rittorno works in a crime-ridden section of Chicago where the majority of people she pulls over for traffic violations don't have licenses or insurance, she said.
"So I get a lot of, 'I'm sorry, baby. I didn't mean it, sweetheart,'" she said. "I hate being called 'baby' or 'sweetheart.' I'm 'officer' to you.''
The police don't like being talked over, either. "Be polite," said Chicago Officer Mike Thomas. "You have your rights as a citizen, too, but it doesn't do you any good to talk while he's talking."
Cops know that people are nervous when they get pulled over, and they expect a certain amount of jumpiness when they approach a car. Rittorno even admitted she's intimidated in the same situation. "I'm the police and I get scared if I get pulled over," she said.
But did you know they're on edge, too? You know who they are, but they don't know whether you're a good guy or a bad guy. "The only thing on his mind when he approaches you is safety," Thomas said. "You know you don't have a gun in your lap, but the officer doesn't know it."
Rittorno, for one, said she assumes everyone has a gun. "I'm always on 10," she said, referring to her high level of vigilance. "I take it down depending on their demeanor or what I see."
[See the Most and Least Expensive Cars to Insure ]
Stay Calm
When those headlights go on, it's best to pull the car to the right, stay in the car, turn the interior lights on if it's dark and put your hands on the steering wheel.
Don't make any quick movements, and don't turn to grab your purse or put your hands in your pocket or under your seat to retrieve your license -- until the officer instructs you to. Then, do it slowly.
Don't move to open the glove box either, until directed. And do that slowly, too. Let the police shine a light inside the box before you reach in. Many criminals hide guns in glove boxes.
"What's going to cause the situation to get worse is for the fear factor to rise in that officer," Koep said. "The officer is more likely to cut you a break as long as you can reduce that fear. …If you're friendly with me, not arguing or denying what happened, that lowers the fear factor and will make me a lot more cooperative with you."
Don't boast about who you know, either. That can infuriate cops. They consider it a veiled threat to their livelihoods. Fortunately, most municipalities have laws in place to insure that an officer is not fired or reprimanded for ticketing, say, the mayor's daughter.
Finally, never try to buy off a cop. "In those instances where they've offered me a bribe," Fanning said. "I loved making those arrests."
Jennifer Waters is a MarketWatch reporter, based in Chicago.
___
Cinnamon To Reduce Cholesterol, Colds - Wellsphere
Cinnamon To Reduce Cholesterol, Colds
Posted by Heather J.
Supplementing one’s diet with Cinnamon can reduce cholesterol, congestion, nausea, diarrhea, and blood sugar, but you have to do more than just sprinkle it on toast. For optimum benefit, take 0.5 to 1 gram of powdered bark (available at most health food stores) in tea three times a day; in liquid extract, 0.5 milliliters three times daily. Its warming effect makes it good for colds, congestion, and high cholesterol, and research has confirmed its anti-bacterial and anti-fungal qualities, making it a good remedy for nausea and diarrhea. A 2004 report in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry showed that cinnamon kills salmonella, a type of bacteria that causes food poisoning. In addition, diabetics who supplemented their diet with up to 6 grams of cinnamon per day saw their cholesterol drop by 12 percent. It also lowered blood sugar levels by 18 percent.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Pumpkins: Carving out Good Health! - Before You Bite - Supermarket Guru
On farm stands across the country, the reds, yellows and greens of summer are turning to the oranges of fall. Yes, the Great Pumpkin has arrived!
Festive and flavorful, a single serving of the delectable orange squash is chock full of vitamin A and potassium and best of all, fat free. A staple in the diets of Native Americans long before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, pumpkins have come to signify the arrival of the fall harvest and the advent of the Halloween season.
Deriving its name from "pepon," the Greek word for large melon, pumpkins are believed to have been first cultivated in Mesoamerica. Some seeds from related plants date back to 5000 B.C. when Spanish and Portuguese explorers carried the seeds of pumpkins back to Europe. Nutty, chewy and sweet, pumpkins have been used as holiday lanterns since the late 1800s when the Halloween pumpkin craze really took off.
Pumpkins take anywhere from 65 to 200 days to mature, depending on variety. There are hundreds of varieties, though all pumpkins belong to the genus Cucurbita. Most pumpkins belong to one of three species: Cucurbita moschata - which includes the tan-colored commercial pumpkins used mostly for canning, Cucurbita pepo - which includes the medium-sized pumpkins used for jack-o-lanterns, and Cucurbita maxima - which includes the giant pumpkins often found in festivals and pumpkin-growing competitions.
One variety, called Orange Smoothie, is bred for its extremely smooth skin and small size, making it ideal for small children to decorate. Another variety, Snackjack, is bred for its high production of seeds without shells. That makes them better for toasting, of course.
Subtly sweet and nutty with a malleable, chewy texture, the roasted seeds from inside your Halloween pumpkin are one of the most nutritious and flavorful seeds around. While pumpkin seeds are available year round, they are the freshest in the fall when pumpkins are in season.
Pumpkin seeds, also known as pepitas, are flat, dark green seeds. Pumpkin seeds, are a good source of iron, zinc and essential fatty acids. Some are encased in a yellow-white husk, although some varieties of pumpkins produce seeds without shells. Pumpkin seeds should be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator. While they may stay edible for several months, they seem to lose their peak freshness after about one to two months.
Most pumpkin varieties start out green and turn orange when ripe. Some tropical pumpkins are actually ripe when green. When choosing a pumpkin for cooking or baking, look for fruits that are heavy for their size with a hard shell - just the opposite of the ideal ornamental pumpkin.
Although the pumpkin is botanically classified as a fruit, nutritionists consider it a vegetable for culinary purposes. Pumpkin is often served as a celebratory side dish, and is popular in soups, breads and pies. The carotene pigments that give pumpkins their signature orange color are being studied for their potential prostate benefits.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Is Android Ready For The Samsung Galaxy Tab Or Not?
Is Android Ready For The Samsung Galaxy Tab Or Not?
Posted on September 12th, 2010 in Android, Google, tablets 0 Comments
While everyone is preparing for the release of the Samsung Galaxy Tab, it seems at least a few people inside of Google aren’t nearly as excited about the product as consumers are.
Since the official announcement of the Galaxy Tab, people have been speculating if this would be the product to put the first chink of the iPad’s armor. While Google wants desperately to put a stop to Apple’s explosive iOS device growth, it seems that at least a few Google employees are saying that this isn’t the time to do it, but it will be soon.
Hugo Barra, director of products for mobile at Google, told Tech Radar late last week:
… the way Android Market works is it’s not going to be available on devices that don’t allow applications to run correctly. Which devices do, and which don’t will be unit specific, but Froyo is not optimised for use on tablets. If you want Android market on that platform, the apps just wouldn’t run, [Froyo] is just not designed for that form factor. We want to make sure that we’re going to create a application distribution mechanism for the Android market, to ensure our users have right experience.
It seems that in the upcoming Gingerbread (Android 3.0) and Honeycomb Android (unknown version number at this time, but presumably 3.1) releases, there is more of a definite eye towards making the operating system work with tablets.
Gingerbread is expected to be released some time in the next few months, so why companies are rushing out tablets now that may not be able to handle full functionality of the operating system is beyond me. If a customer gets burnt once by “an Android tablet”, they aren’t going to care about future versions that are optimized for the form factor as they will just see it as the same type of device that burned them before.
The problem is that even Google seems confused by what is going to happen in these pre-Gingerbread devices. Writing on the Android Developer’s Blog, Google open source and compatibility program manager Dan Morrill had a completely different view of what will happen in the Marketplace as this same issue is cropping up with the Android-powered Google TV:
Fortunately, you can use our built-in tools to handle these cases and control which devices your app appears to in Android Market. Android lets you provide versions of your UI optimized for various screen configurations, and each device will pick the one that runs best. Meanwhile, Android Market will make sure your apps only appear to devices that can run them, by matching those features you list as required (via tags) only with devices that have those features.
Okay, so which is it? Will apps work in the Galaxy Tab or not?
While you have to thank Google for releasing an “open” operating system, I still feel the overall situation is a mess. You have companies using versions of the OS that are several generations out of date or you have other companies rushing to put the latest version in devices it wasn’t meant for. The onus of these situations certainly falls on the manufacturers, but you can’t say that Google’s hands are completely clean in this. They want to show up Apple, and they want to be able to say they have a ton of devices running Android, but this rush to get as many products as possible into the marketplace is even causing confusion inside the company, and that is never a good thing.
Enjoy the glory while you can Google, but I think the “openess” of Android may be about to leave a bad taste in some people’s mouths.
What say you? Do you think Google should crack down at least somewhat on the way companies are using Android to make sure you get the best possible user experience?
Friday, September 10, 2010
How to Cloudify Your Apple Life. Without Apple's Help
How to Cloudify Your Apple Life. Without Apple's Help.
The Apple internet revolution we needed didn't happen. We wanted a unified service that would let us store all our media and personal information in the ether. But we didn't get it. So forget the fruit stand; we're going rogue.
The dream is a single service that invisibly shuttles data to and from our phones and computers; streams an infinite jukebox of music and videos to every device we own; stores every photo and video we snap in the cloud. It's email, texts and voicemails, easily accessed from anywhere or anything. In short, seamless ubiquity of all the things we care about. Apple's still a long way from getting there. But you can cloudify your life right now and get pretty close to the dream with just a little bit of legwork.
Store everything you care about online
Dropbox is the wet dream of online storage and sync. New users get 2GB of free storage—which you can pump to 10GB by getting your friends to sign up. Dropbox syncs data across multiple computers and devices, and makes it easy to share files with just a couple of clicks. (It's easy to setup, say, a personal music sharing service between you and a few friends). The file syncing speed and ease-of-use puts iDisk to shame, frankly. Better still, it has mobile apps for all iOS devices and Android, with a BlackBerry app on the way, so you can access files from your smartphone.
Because of the way it syncs files, there's also a ton of clever ways to use Dropbox, like starting torrents from any computer. Personally, I use it as a replacement for a Docs folder—by saving all of my text files in Dropbox, I can pick up wherever I left from any computer, and never again worry about a computer crash taking out my critical docs. (And with Elements, edit them from my iPhone or iPad too.)
If you're just looking for raw online storage, Windows Live SkyDrive drops 25GB in your lap for free.
Dump all your photos and videos in the cloud
Flickr is the best way to go for online photo and video storage and sharing. It's got the most massive community, some of the most extensive tools, and with the recent redesign, looks fresher than ever. Thanks to the huge community, Flickr plugins and apps abound for basically every platform and device, from dedicated upload(e)r apps to iPhoto bolt-ons, and an excellent mobile app for iPhone that can now upload multiple photos in the background. Flickr's massiveness also means it's more likely than most to be integrated into other service and devices, like Apple TV, Facebook and other stuff. Free accounts come with 100MB of storage a month, and a pro account with unlimited storage is just $25 a year.
Write and edit notes anywhere
While Dropbox + Elements satisfies most of my requirements for writing anywhere, it's hard to deny the appeal of Simplenote, which stores plain text notes online, easily accessible from desktops or iPhone/iPad with free apps. Everything is synced quickly and seamlessly. It's great. (It's got a better interface Evernote, though you can go that route as well.) Check out Lifehacker's definitive guide to getting it set up everywhere you could possibly wanna capture text.
Read ebooks on any screen you've got
One word: Kindle. Free apps for Mac, PC, Android and iPhone mean you can snag your Kindle books on pretty much anything, anytime you want. The apps sync where you left off, bookmarks and highlights. And it's the service that seems most likely to be left standing at the end of the great ebook war, so you can breathe (slightly) easier about the fact every new bestseller is wrapped up in DRM.
Consume all the music and video you want
Sadly, Lala is dead, and Apple hasn't brought back it back as an iTunes that lives in the cloud. Worse, Spotify, the most obvious choice to entirely replace iTunes with a jukebox in the sky—complete with an iPhone app with offline caching—isn't available in the US. Lifehacker has a handy guide to streaming services. Any totally on-demand service is going to run you $5-$10 a month, but your best bets are Rhapsody or Rdio, which both have millions of songs available for unlimited streaming, and apps for PC, Mac, iPhone and Android. A huge perk of Rhapsody? The iPhone app has local caching for offline playback. If you're more flexible, there's always radio-style services like Pandora and Last.FM.
To stream music from your desktop to your phone, though, SubSonic is one of the better ways to go—a $5 app takes out most of the hassle. And, slightly more robust than iTunes' new(ish) native Home Sharing, MediaRover syncs iTunes libraries across multiple PCs and Macs, even backing up the shared, combined library to a NAS for access by all. (Oh, and it makes for easy access from your Xbox 360 or PS3.)
Video's slightly trickier. There's no way to get a complete catalog for any one service, but if you're going to drop money each month, Netflix is the best bet for a subscription that'll stream movies to most any screen in your house—iOS devices, Mac, PC, Xbox 360, Blu-ray players, TVs, you name it. It syncs where you last left off in a movie, so you start watching on your TV and pick up on an iPad. And hey! You can also get one of those shiny discs in the mail each month, if you want.
Stream video to an iPad or iPhone? AirVideo makes it easy, and supports multiple formats, like MKV and Divx.
Access your contacts, email, calendars, texts and voicemail anywhere
This might as well be called "the Google Section," since Google provides the easiest way to frictionlessly sync all of your critical info across multiple devices.
First, you'll wanna set up Gmail and calendar sync with your PC or Mac. Fortunately, syncing Google contacts with the Mac address book is easy—it's just a checkbox under Accounts in Preferences. Here's how to set it up in Outlook.
Google Sync for Mobile uses Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync to sync mail, contacts and calendars from your Google account with full over-the-air push powers. The catch is that it becomes your master contact list, erasing the rest of them from the phone, so make sure they're all uploaded to your Google account. (On the plus side, Google Contacts sucks a lot less than it used to.)You can sync additional calendars from other accounts by setting them as CalDAV accounts (which works for iCal, or any other app with CalDAV support as well). Same goes for email—just set them as a standard IMAP account, which keeps your email in sync across multiple devices. Oh, and if you just want push email notifications without going through this mess, the Google iPhone app will let you know when new emails arrive for a single account.
Google Voice, now open to everyone, is the magic that'll let you access your voicemails and text messages from any phone (with a decent browser) or desktop. And, now you can make free calls with your Google Voice number from Gmail (in addition to these 10 tricks from Lifehacker).
Sync your bookmarks to everything with a web browser
The free program Xmarks will sync your bookmarks across multiple browsers and computers—though you'll have to use iTunes to push them down to your iPhone. (There's also Firefox Sync for Mozilla diehards.)
Command your computer from anywhere
Vee. Enn. See. If you wanna control your computer from anywhere, accessing files, starting up torrents or whatever else you could possibly wanna do by remote controlling your home computer, VNC is the way to go. Just follow this handy how-to guide.
It takes way more effort than it should to perfectly live your life where everything's connected, but once everything's tied together, it's...comforting.
Illustration by our contributing illustrator Sam Spratt. Check out Sam's portfolio and become a fan of his Facebook Artist's Page.
Send an email to matt buchanan, the author of this post, at matt@gizmodo.com.
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Monday, September 06, 2010
Labor Day
The only productive thing I did today was to transition my Linux Laptops from a summer theme to a Fall theme. Next I will transition my Macs to a fall theme.
Labor Day
The only productive thing I did today was to transition my Linux Laptops from a summer theme to a Fall theme. Next I will transition my Macs to a fall theme.