Eideard

Do you lie awake at night expecting aliens to invade our planet? Perhaps you have nightmares after watching “Mars attacks!” or think Jell-O is now yuck after seeing “The green slime.”

Chances are, regardless of whether you are anxious about aliens or not, that it’s not something you think about when you buy a new computer or gadget. For example, have you ever thought about whether the warranty of your brand new computer is valid if (when?) the aliens arrive?

If that’s you, you should definitely not expect Taiwanese computer, component, and gadget manufacturer Asus to help.

Under the heading “Exclusions from your ASUS Warranty Extension Program including the WEP On-Site NBD Limited Hardware Warranty Service” we can read some of the usual things you would expect to find in this text…

But as we continue down the list of exclusions something more unusual appears: “There is damage caused by natural disaster, intentional or unintentional misuse, acts of war, space invasions, abuse, neglect, improper maintenance, or use under abnormal conditions.”

Uh, OK.

Thanks, Ursarodinia

Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou and his wife Christine Chow Mei-ching celebrate
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

The rain that swept the city streets, blurring lights and muffling the blare of klaxons, perhaps helped to dampen passions. Outside the Kuomintang’s Taipei headquarters, the victors smiled under thin plastic hoods, cheering in relief as much as in celebration. Across town, the defeated opposition’s supporters seemed subdued.

Taiwanese politics are vibrant, emotional, sometimes dirty and occasionally violent. Some might have expected stronger reactions after a race too close to call culminated in yesterday’s re-election of incumbent Ma Ying-jeou, who has overseen an unprecedented rapprochement with China.

But the muted response to his victory – he took 51.6% of the vote to challenger Tsai Ing-wen’s 45.6% – echoed an unusually calm campaign. Some observers think this youthful democracy’s fifth presidential election offers hope that its politics are evolving from what one voter described as “two parties shouting at each other”…

The result was a relief for Beijing, displeased by the re-emergence of the pro-independence DPP, despite Tsai’s care in moderating the party’s rhetoric. The election was watched closely in Washington, amid fears of potential instability…

Somehow separate from Washington’s recent warhawk agitprop about the region – I guess.

Read the rest of this entry »

 
A baseball fan in Taiwan dropped his toddler daughter while trying to catch a foul ball.

Cameras at the televised game between the Taipei Brother Elephants and Taoyuan’s Lamigo Monkeys, also caught the fan’s wife shouting at him afterwards.

Mr Bai later said “I was going to catch the ball using one hand but ended up lifting both hands and dropped my daughter.”

The girl said she slightly hurt one leg but was otherwise unhurt.

Do not miss the look – that look, dumbass – and somewhat “corrective” words from this guy’s wife at the end.

Police in the southern Taiwan city of Kaohsiung mobilized the bomb squad after a suspicious package was found in a subway station toilet, only to find it contained nothing more dangerous than mooncakes.

A cleaner called police to report the package left on top of a waste bin Saturday. Part of the station, known for its stained glass ceiling, was cordoned off and explosives experts were called in.

TV pictures showed a police officer in a full protective suit entering the toilet carrying specialist equipment while other officers waited outside with more gear. The officer then emerged carrying a bright blue cardboard box full of mooncakes, pastries with sweet fillings traditionally eaten at the Mid-Autumn Festival.

“It was x-rayed first to see what it was and whether there was any chemical or electrical reaction,” local police station chief Cheng Ming-chung told TV.

“Someone must have put it down to use the toilet and forgotten it when they left,” he said, adding that the police would continue to investigate.

Nice fresh mooncakes. Think they’ll end up in “Lost and Found” or shared at the police station?

If I realized these were my mooncakes, the last thing I would do is try to claim them back from the coppers. They might try to bill me for the cost of the security alert.

No comment.

Red imported fire ant invasions around the globe in recent years can now be traced to the southern U.S., where the nuisance insect gained a foothold in the 1930s, new University of Florida research has found.

Native to South America, the ant had been contained there and in the southeastern U.S. before turning up in faraway places in the last 20 years — including California, China, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand…

The team’s findings could prove helpful in finding new ways to control the invasive species, Solenopsis invicta, Ascunce said. Americans spend more than $6 billion a year to control the ants and offset damage they cause, including medical expenses and $750 million in agricultural losses.

“Fire ants are very annoying pests, and they cause people to suffer,” Marina Ascunce said. “People who are allergic can die (from ant stings).” Red imported fire ants are highly aggressive. They have a painful sting, often discovered by humans only after stepping on a mound.

The research team used several types of molecular genetic markers to trace the origins of ants in nine locations where recent invasions occurred. They traced all but one of the invasions to the southern U.S. The exception was an instance where the ants moved from the southeastern U.S. to California, then to Taiwan.

“I thought that at least one of the populations in the newly invaded areas would have come from South America, but all of the genetic data suggest the most likely source in virtually every case was the southern U.S.,” she said.

The study results show the problematic side of a robust global trade and travel network.

RTFA for details on how folks combat the mean little critters. Resign yourself to the fact that all the efforts to keep dangerous volunteer species, animal, vegetable and insectivorous – effective in the past – will need to be upgraded continually in a global economy.

Ever dreamt of controlling a dot-gov or dot-edu? A hacker is selling access to dozens of military, government, and university Websites for $55-499 a piece.

Discovered by security firm Imperva, the hacker advertises varying fees, services, and proofs for cracking into .mil, .gov, and .edu sites around the world.

The priciest, access to the homepage of the U.S. Army, National Guard, and Army Forces, goes for $499 each, followed by access of university and governmental Websites. You’ll also find passes to the Italian Official Government Website for $99 or a Taiwanese educational center for $88…

Brian Krebs of Krebson Security said he saw the back-end evidence of the hacks and found them legit.

“Amid all of the media and public fascination with threats like Stuxnet and weighty terms such as “cyberwar,” it’s easy to overlook the more humdrum and persistent security threats, such as Web site vulnerabilities. But none of these distractions should excuse U.S. military leaders from making sure their Websites aren’t trivially hackable by script kiddies,” he wrote on his blog.

You wonder if the official webmanagers of all these sites even keep up-to-date with the world of patches?

Looks more like a Royal Enfield to me – but, you get the idea

Harley-Davidson, the iconic American motorcycle brand with a cult-like following, has announced it has chosen to build its second assembly plant ever outside the United States in India.

The “complete knock down” plant or CKD is expected to be up and running in the northern Indian state of Haryana in first half of 2011. Parts made in America will be put together for the Indian market in Haryana.

“What we are doing is made in USA, assembled in India, which will have a positive job effect back home which is why we are driving this investment as quickly as we are,” Anoop Prakash managing director for Harley Davidson India told CNN.

The company is trying to expand its brand internationally from 30 to 40 percent by 2014 according to Prakash and India plays an important role in that.

Beyond the obvious market potential there is another major reason Harley-Davidson is building an assembly plant in India — to bring down India’s import duties which right now are so high Indian consumers pay double for fully assembled imported vehicles.

Exporting just the parts to India could lower the import duty tariffs by around 80 percent according to Prakash.

A certain amount of the tale is complete bullshit, of course. I’ve been teasing my friends who are Harley owners – the types who say they’d never own a “rice-burner” – teasing them with a standing bet.

There have been significant number of Asian parts on a Harley for decades.

Dumbest floor lamp ever.

A employee poses with the Black Horse Lamp displayed inside a hotel in Taipei. The piece was conceptualised by design house Moooi of the Netherlands and is made from PVC/cotton on a metal structure.

Garlic has “significant” potential for preventing cardiomyopathy, a form of heart disease that is a leading cause of death in people with diabetes, scientists have concluded in a new study…

Wei-Wen Kuo and colleagues note that people with diabetes have at least twice the risk of death from heart disease as others, with heart disease accounting for 80 percent of all diabetes-related deaths. They are especially vulnerable to a form of heart disease termed diabetic cardiomyopathy, which inflames and weakens the heart’s muscle tissue.

Kuo’s group had hints from past studies that garlic might protect against heart disease in general and also help control the abnormally high blood sugar levels that occur in diabetes. But they realized that few studies had been done specifically on garlic’s effects on diabetic cardiomyopathy.

The scientists fed either garlic oil or corn oil to laboratory rats with diabetes. Animals given garlic oil experienced beneficial changes associated with protection against heart damage. The changes appeared to be associated with the potent antioxidant properties of garlic oil, the scientists say, adding that they identified more than 20 substances in garlic oil that may contribute to the effect.

Garlic rules!

I grew up with garlic in everything we ate – the Italian half of the family absolutely owned the family menu. And Italian-Americans notoriously use more garlic than do their relatives back in Italy. Fortunately, though my honey grew up with an entirely different family palate, her own choices as an adult followed the same Mediterranean pathways.