Say it isn't so!

I was one the first people I know of to realize the potential of the iPod. It was released in October of 2001 and by Christmas that same year, I had one. Since then it has become a part of my being. I never go anywhere without it. I feel naked without it. It is one of the great joys of my life to carry around My music and share it with others. The other night I had dl'd some moe shows and was dying to transfer them to the iPod. To my horror, it never showed up on the desktop.
OK---deep breath--- maybe it's the cable. I plugged in another IEEE 1394 6pin to 6 pin cable. Nothing. Now I'm really starting to freak. Let me try the AC charger, at least I should still be able to charge it. Freak out turns to panic. No charge. I reset it. I reinstall the software. Nothing. I try the firewire again. Halleluah! It starts to charge! Then it stops. This can't be happening!
I start to search the forums at Apple support and iPod Lounge. Looks like the firewire port has gone bad. Today I took it to the Apple store. They could not get a response either. I begin to contemplate suicide. Sort of. I mean I have been wanting a new one. The salesperson tells me that they can send it off for repair but then directs me to a web site called ipodresq.com
For $30 bucks, they overnight you a box, you stick your patient in it and overnight it back, they diagnose the problem and email you an estimate. So that is where we are. At least I have the laptop and Airport express so I can stream my music to the stereo. But, I CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT AN IPOD!
I'll keep you posted. I do have a b-day coming up.

Almost there.........

I can't wait for this road to be finished. This will cut so much time and traffic headaches for we Enonians (is that a word?) that want to travel to the fashionable west end and Short Pump, not to mention the trip to C-Ville.

Route 288 segment to open Friday

Richmond Times-Dispatch

Thursday, August 26, 2004

A key section of state Route 288, including its bridge over the James River, is set to open about 3 p.m. Friday.

The Virginia Department of Transportation today announced plans to open the 7-mile stretch from state Route 6 (Patterson Avenue) in eastern Goochland County to U.S. 60 (Midlothian Turnpike) in western Chesterfield County.

Officials are urging motorists to use extreme caution as construction crews are continuing to work on the road.

The new section will cut the driving time of motorists who travel the distant suburbs west of Richmond, particularly between western Chesterfield and Henrico counties.

The new section includes interchanges at Route 6 and U.S. 60, as well as state Route 711 (Huguenot Trail) in eastern Powhatan County.

Tomorrow's scheduled opening will leave one section of Route 288 to be opened. That section, from U.S. 60 south to where Route 288 currently ends at Lucks Lane, is expected to open later this fall.

Once complete, Route 288 will link Interstate 95 in southeastern Chesterfield to Interstate 64 in eastern Goochland and be part of a network of roads circling through Richmond's outer suburbs.

This story can be found at: http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD/MGArticle/RTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031777551592

A very interesting discovery

Earth-like planet discovered 50 light-years away

Planet is smallest known outside our solar system

By Robert Roy Britt
SPACE.com

(SPACE.com) -- In a discovery that has left one expert stunned, European astronomers have found one of the smallest planets known outside our solar system, a world about 14 times the mass of our own around a star much like the sun.

It could be a rocky planet with a thin atmosphere, a sort of "super Earth," the researchers said today.

But this is no typical Earth. It completes its tight orbit in less than 10 days, compared to the 365 required for our year. Its daytime face would be scorched.

The planet's surface conditions aren't known, said Portuguese researcher Nuno Santos, who led the discovery. "However, we can expect it to be quite hot, given the proximity to the star."

Hot as in around 1,160 degrees Fahrenheit (900 Kelvin), Santos said.

Still, the discovery is a significant advance in technology: No planet so small has ever been detected around a normal star. And the finding reveals a solar system more similar to our own than anything found so far.

Terrestrial in nature

The star is like our sun and just 50 light-years away. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers). Most of the known extrasolar planets are hundreds or thousands of light-years distant.

The star, mu Arae, is visible under dark skies from the Southern Hemisphere. It harbors two other planets. One is Jupiter-sized and takes 650 days to make its annual trip around the star. The other planet, whose existence was confirmed with the help of the new observations, is farther out.

The three-planet setup, with one being rocky, is unique.

"It's much closer to our solar system than anything we've found so far," said Alan Boss, a planet-formation theorist at the Carnegie Institution in Washington.

"This really is an exciting discovery," said Boss, who was not involved in the work. "I'm still somewhat stunned they have such good data."

The discovery was made with a European Southern Observatory telescope at La Silla, Chile, working at the verge of what's possible to detect.

Most of the more than 120 planets found beyond our solar system are gaseous worlds as big or larger than Jupiter, mostly in tight orbits that would not permit a rocky planet to survive.

A handful of planets smaller than Saturn have been found, but none anywhere near as small as the one announced today. And a trio of roughly Earth-sized planets was found in 2002 to orbit a dense stellar corpse known as a neutron star. They are oddballs, however, circling rapidly around a dark star that would not support life. Some planet hunters don't consider these three to be as important as planets around normal stars.

At 14 times the mass of Earth, the newfound planet -- circling a star similar in size and brightness to our sun -- is about as heavy as Uranus, a world of gas and ice and the smallest giant planet in our solar system. Theorists say 14 Earth-masses is roughly the upper limit for a planet to possibly remain rocky, however. And because this planet is so close to its host star, it likely had a much different formation history than Uranus.

In our solar system, the four innermost planets are all rocky.

Rock and air

The leading theory of planet formation has the gas giants forming from a rocky core, a process in which the core develops over time, then reaches a tipping point when gravity can rapidly collect a huge envelope of gas. This theory suggests the newfound planet never reached that critical mass, said Santos, of the Centro de Astronomia e Astrofisica da Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal.

"Otherwise the planet would have become much more massive," Santos said via e-mail.

"This object is therefore likely to be a planet with a rocky core surrounded by a small gaseous envelope and would therefore qualify as a super-Earth," the European team said in a statement.

In a telephone interview, Boss of the Carnegie Institution said the European's analysis of the data represents a "reasonable argument." He said the planet had to form inside the orbit of the larger planet in the system, which orbits the star about twice as far as Earth is from the sun. Boss also points out that Earth is about 18 times as massive as Mercury, so even in our solar system there is a range of possibilities for rocky planets.

Finally, Boss said, the star mu Arae has a higher metal content than the sun, and theory says a planet forming close to such a star can be expected to gather more mass. It's all about how much building material is available, he said.

There are no conventional pictures of the object, as it was detected by noting its gravitational effect on the star. The search project leading to the discovery is led by Michel Mayor of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland.

While researchers do not know the full range of conditions under which life can survive, the newly discovered world, with its hot surface, is not the sort of place biologists would expect to find life as we know it.

Santos said life on the large world is not likely. But, he added, "one never knows."

Find this article at: http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/08/26/new.planet/index.html

Damn Bears!

Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, West Nile virus, poison ivy and now this. The outdoors just isn't safe anymore.

From CNN:

Bear guzzles 36 beers, passes out at campground

SEATTLE, Washington (Reuters) -- A black bear was found passed out at a campground in Washington state recently after guzzling down three dozen cans of a local beer, a campground worker said on Wednesday.

"We noticed a bear sleeping on the common lawn and wondered what was going on until we discovered that there were a lot of beer cans lying around," said Lisa Broxson, a worker at the Baker Lake Resort, 80 miles (129 kilometers) northeast of Seattle.

The hard-drinking bear, estimated to be about two years old, broke into campers' coolers and, using his claws and teeth to open the cans, swilled down the suds.

It turns out the bear was a bit of a beer sophisticate. He tried a mass-market Busch beer, but switched to Rainier Beer, a local ale, and stuck with it for his drinking binge.

Wildlife agents chased the bear away, but it returned the next day, said Broxson.

They set a trap using as bait some doughnuts, honey and two cans of Rainier Beer. It worked, and the bear was captured for relocation.

Can the Orange Crate and Apple Barrel be far behind?

Way to go Schwinn! These bikes were the envy of all the Enon boys when we were growing up. Of course we would have taken them down to the local welding shop for some fork extensions. Ain't no chopper, ain't no good.

Feed: Boing Boing Title: New Stingray	Author: David Pescovitz

Schwinn has re-issued its original Sting-Ray street bike. The 2004 models are available with the classic banana seat frame or in a new chopped Harley-esque low-rider design. Too bad they don't offer a sissy bar option, probably a safety decision to avoid encouraging Evil Knievel-style wheelies. Link (Thanks, C-Lo!)

Bonnie and Charley

What do you do when there is a tropical storm with a hurricane right behind it?
Right!- Head for your mobile home where you will be safe!
Friday morning, I got an email from the Lake Gaston Association saying that Dominion was dropping the lake level in preparation for the rainfall. The drawdown was to start at 12 noon so I left work to secure the pontoons at the lake. If you don't loosen the dock ropes, you can pull an anchor through your deck or pull a pier up. So we got down Friday afternoon and battened down the hatches. The remnants of Bonnie had run up against a cold front coming over the mountains and spawned some nasty t-storms, a few of them tornadic. We got popped about 7pm and lost power, cable, and telephone. I hooked up the generator, so we at least had lights, refigeration and the Grateful Dead, Soldier Field '92 on the iPod. Robin and Lisa got into the wine, I got into the Early Times. Had to have a hurricane party, right? Saturday morn comes around and my hair hurts. I hadn't had bourbon like that since starting South Beach. We got power back during the night and cable and phone were back Sat morn. I had the hurricane net on the ham radio (14.325 USB), the hurricane net on Echolink (VOIP internet radio), RSS feed from National Hurricane Center, NWS on the VHF handheld and the Weather Channel on cable.
Can't have too much information. Charley comes ashore about noon, and initially it looked like it was coming right through here. Luckily, it took an eastern track so we had heavy rain and no wind. Over 4'' rain between 5pm Friday and 1pm Sunday and it is still raining as I write this. A good weekend to hunker down and watch the Olympics. I did try and get a ride in this morning. It wasn't raining when I left, so I decided to try the Lizzard Creek option. At the decision point in Gasburg, I went ahead with my choice. As soon as I did so, it began a steady soaking rain. Oh well, a work-out and a shower in one.

Dude, What GHz is your brain running at?

I am going to overclock mine, then add more memory! And I always thought the hippocampus was where hippo's went to school,>)

Feed: Boing Boing Title: Molecules of memory improvement	Author: David Pescovitz

An MIT neuroscientist's latest research on how our brains build and eliminate synapses could someday enable us to tweak the the process and overclock our minds. Professor Morgan Sheng and postdoc Sang Hyoung Lee identified the "traffic cop" molecule that controls the number of receptors on the surface of neurons. "Because more receptors mean stronger connections between brain cells, manipulating this process may one day provide a means of boosting brainpower in the hippocampus, where long-term memories are stored." Link

Good 'ol Micro$oft

Always looking out for their customers. I wonder how many people are going to dl a 270 some Mb file via http?

Feed: Boing Boing Title: XP Service Pack torrent shut down by Microsoft	Author: Cory Doctorow

Remember SP2Torrent.com? This was the BitTorrent site that was helping distribute copies of the Windows XP Service Pack 2 (which is so unweildy and yet so critical and sought-after that MSFT is having a hard time distributing it effectively) via BitTorrent, a system that enlists everyone who tries to download a file into distributing it as well, so that the more popular a file becomes, the easier it is to download. Anyway, the site is no longer providing this free service to Windows users, because the company threatened to sue them if they kept it up. Lucky MSFT customers, huh? Microsoft sent DMCA takedown notices to our two webhosts, one of which was just linking to a torrent file on another server. We've stood up to these kinds of legal threats before (see the Grey Tuesday protests), but we decided not to bother this time, because we started this site primarily as a demonstration and to that end it's already been a huge success. SP2torrent.com showed how filesharing technlogy gives people without budgets or huge servers the power to solve problems themselves, without waiting for the government or some corporation to do it for them. For another demonstration that's still in action, check out p2pcongress.org. If you need Windows XP SP2, you can download it from Microsoft's inscrutable webpage: Link (Thanks, Matt!)

I particularly like the second comment.

Feed: Boing Boing Title: Barenaked Ladies Meetup in Islamabad draws men looking for naked chicks	Author: Cory Doctorow

There's a Barenaked Ladies Meetup where fans of the Toronto band can get together in cities around the world and discuss the Ladies' goofy brand of upbeat pop. The Toronto BNL Meetup has 10 members, but the Islamabad, Pakistan Meetup has 55! How is such a thing possible? Turns out they're not fans of the Barenaked Ladies, the band -- they're fans of bare, naked ladies, the concept: alivo hi there i am male 24 from isb, and love to have fun, feel free to contact me for some fun 00923008550948 kukucoo I AM TO SEE AND FEEL HOW BEAUTIFUL YOU AS A WOMAN ARE. LostAlone well i m 23 male from islamabd looking for such meeting any body can contact me free 03005130953 i m 5 11 fair having big mustaches, haaa dont be afraid .. i m doin mba it ths itt Link

Football weather and fresh seafood

Wow! The wx this weekend felt like we should have been headed to a college football game. I love fall at the lake , but I have never experienced it in August! The high temp Saturday was 74 and made for some lovely cycling. I did the "around the block" route Saturday (16 mi) and the Lizard Creek Loop (22 mi) on Sunday. Both routes take me past the most happenin' spot on the lake; the Lake Country Flea Market. On Saturday, I noticed a vendor advertising "Fresh NC Shrimp". Upon further investigation, I also noticed "Fresh Yellowfin Tuna Steaks". They had me at that point. I finished my ride, grabbed a quick shower and back to the Flea Market, I went. The shrimp were phenomenal, 30-36 count and just as sweet as they could be, at $5.75 lb! I had to look at the other offerings, some of the prettiest red snapper and sea scallops at $7.50 per pint. Tuna steaks were sold out, but my new friend told me to come back tomorrow and he would have some just for me. I left with scallops and shrimp, and since we already had some nice tenderloin filets, it was surf & turf night at the Sowers Grill. Next morning I rode the Lizzard Creek circuit backwards (I like to mix it up) and there was my new friend with tuna steaks that can only be described as sashimi grade. If I had some wasabi, I would have eaten one right there. We took those home and grilled them at Jim and Connie's with a little ginger marinade. Now I can't wait until next weekend. Mahi and Blackened Redfish are on the menu, all South Beach approved. I even managed to lose another lb over the weekend, feasting like I did. South Beach works. Still no beer. Four weeks now.

Just where is Mexifornia?

This is a great post from Boing Boing:

Feed: Boing Boing Title: World map created from imperfect memory and inattention to geography	Author: Cory Doctorow

Inspired by the question, "How many hours does it take to go to Japan by car?", the Fool's World Map plots out all the geographic misapprehensions uncovered during an informal survey. Link (via Kottke)

Use the link to find out more about this cerebral project.

JibJab Update

Arlo Guthrie did an NRP appearance this week to talk about his father, Woody Guthrie, and his attitude to copyright. Woody's song "This Land is Your Land" was brilliantly parodied by JibJab in an election-season Flash movie, and the publishing company that controls Woody's rights has brought legal action against JibJab -- and EFF has responded by filing its own legal action against the rightsholders. Arlo implies that Woody would have wanted it that way:

Well, I really can't speak for him. I can just tell you that when I saw it a few weeks ago I thought it was one of the funniest commentaries if not one of the most directly inspired... I called my sister, I called my friends, I sent everybody a link to the site so that they could go see it. And we've all been laughing about it since then. I think my dad would have absolutely loved the humor in it.

Link

W&M archaeologists may have found Werowocomoco

People have been calling the woods of eastern Virginia home for thousands of years. This find, if it proves to be what it is thought to be, was the largest settlement in the area and was a major influence on the life of these early inhabitants.

Discovery of ditches called 'unusual'
Two ancient ditches might define the village where Powhatan imprisoned Capt. John Smith.
BY MARK ST. JOHN ERICKSON
247-4783

August 5 2004

Archaeologists probing for the remains of Chief Powhatan's legendary home village - known as Werowocomoco - have unearthed evidence of a mysterious landscape feature more than 200 feet long and nearly 600 years old.

Tracking the paths of two ancient ditches spaced roughly 6 feet apart, a College of William and Mary summer field school followed them north along the York River for more than 100 feet. Then the impressions began curving in tandem to the east, taking the five-week-long dig an additional 100 feet before the season ended.

Much more work will be required before the archaeologists can determine whether their giant find corresponds to an immense, D-shaped feature depicted in a circa 1608 Spanish map of Powhatan's capital. But its sheer size and uniqueness, coupled with the possibility that it might have been a familiar part of the landscape at the time of Pocahontas and Capt. John Smith, has sparked considerable excitement among scientists looking for the long-lost Indian settlement.

"We're still sorting it out and developing hypotheses - and we still have much more excavating to do," William and Mary archaeologist Martin Gallivan said during a tour Wednesday afternoon conducted for U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Davis, R-Gloucester.

"But we've determined that these ditches extend much further than we expected them to - and it's likely that they continue beyond where the excavation stopped. So we think that this is something different, something really unusual."

Partly discovered in 2003, the parallel ditches measure roughly 4 feet wide and 3 feet deep, making them far more robust than the usual examples found at American Indian sites. Despite that girth, Gallivan and his colleagues were greatly surprised earlier this summer when the original 25-foot-long section turned out to be the beginning of something much larger.

"I thought they might go on for 100 feet or so," Gallivan said. "But they extended well over 200 feet in length by the time we were done."

Such extraordinary size fits in well with Colonial descriptions of Werowocomoco, which was the capital of Powhatan's expansive Chesapeake Bay chiefdom.

In his books about Virginia, Smith called the village the largest and most powerful of the American Indian settlements - and he gave particular attention to his account of being captured and marched through the village to the doorstep of Powhatan's house. He also left an estimate of the distance from the waterfront that has fueled speculation about the newly uncovered landscape feature.

"Smith said that Powhatan's house was '30 score' from the waterfront," said archaeologist E. Randolph Turner III, director of the Portsmouth regional office of the state Department of Historic Resources.

"The problem is that he didn't say 30 score what. But if you assume he's talking about paces, that 30 score takes you right up from the waterfront to these ditches."

Other archaeological evidence links the site to Werowocomoco, too, including an unusually dense concentration of American Indian artifacts and residential features found this past summer along the river.

A third part of this year's excavation turned up additional evidence of American Indian dwellings between the ditches and the waterfront.

Added up over the past three years of digging, the number of such deposits ranges over about 30 acres. And though radiocarbon dating estimates that the ditches were originally dug in the early 1400s, other evidence traces the village back as many as 15,000 years.

"This is a very, very large Indian settlement. Normally, you'd just have a couple of acres or so - and they'd all be down on the water," Turner said.

"So just from the size of what we've found, something very unusual seems to be happening on this site."

Among contemporary Virginia Indians, many people seem equally impressed by the excavation's findings, including Chief Stephen R. Adkins of the Chickahominy.

After visiting the farm at the invitation of owners Robert and Lynn Ripley, who discovered the first American Indian artifacts here more than seven years ago, he has few doubts about Powhatan's presence and the discovery of his long-lost capital.

"When I step on this site, I feel different," Adkins said Wednesday. "The spirituality is here - and it touches me."

Copyright © 2004, Daily Press

Geocaching- The High Tech Treasure Hunt

Part sport, part treasure hunt, geocaching has become one of the fastest-growing outdoor activities since it was launched in 2000. More than 90,000 "treasure chests" -- mostly plastic or metal boxes containing logbooks and sometimes items such as CDs, photos or games -- are hidden in parks, cities or the wilderness of 202 countries. You get coordinates to each one from Web sites (like geocaching.com) devoted to the sport, then find it with the help of a GPS receiver, a device that uses satellite signals to calculate positions. What's the appeal? "It comes down to our basic nature as hunter-gatherers," says Geoff Matter, a Hopkinton, Mass., geocacher. "I feel like I'm doing something instinctive." Most caches take from 15 minutes to an hour to find; some people go to great lengths to make things difficult, such as by leaving puzzles as clues. Some caches require equipment to, say, hang off the side of a cliff. Once you find a cache, you jot a note in the logbook, then leave it for others to uncover. Geocaching is not without controversy: Some land management groups worry about cachers' potential impact. But rules prohibit altering the landscape, and most players leave things better than they found them.y.

WiFi World Record

Makes me want to build a Pringles can antenna!

Wi-Fi Shootout in the Desert

By Kim Zetter

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,64440,00.html

02:00 AM Aug. 03, 2004 PT

LAS VEGAS -- Mobile warriors having trouble making a wireless connection across the hall might want to give some Ohio teens a call. This weekend they were able to make a 55-mile Wi-Fi connection.

The teens from Cincinnati got an ovation at the DefCon hacker conference here Sunday when organizers announced at the Alexis Park Resort that the winners of this year's Wi-Fi shootout might have broken a world record for ground distance in establishing a 55.1-mile Wi-Fi connection.
DefCon, in its 12th year of gathering hackers, security professionals and undercover intelligence agents from various countries, held its usual list of extracurricular competitions to accompany talks on subjects like hacking with Google and hacking RFID tags.

The Wi-Fi shootout, held for the second time, was among the most popular contests. Six teams participated, including two women who won an award for the most innovative antenna design, which consisted of an assortment of cardboard, duct tape and a car sun visor. That's only slightly less conventional than previous contestants, who built antennas from Pringles and Hormel Chili cans. The jury-rigged antenna achieved a connection at 0.82 miles.

Contestants had to set up a pair of computers, get an 802.11b Wi-Fi connection working on each one and then see how far apart they could place the computers and still maintain a connection using homebrewed and commercial antennas with and without amplifiers.

While one part of the winning team climbed a mountain with equipment, another part of the team climbed a second mountain. Then the first group shot a signal from one station to the second station with an encrypted message provided by the judges. They logged increasing distances over two days. (Wired magazine helped sponsor the contest.) Contest judges verified the distances using GPS coordinates.

Last year, teams got caught in a two-hour traffic jam before they reached the base camp, at 4,650 feet above sea level, then faced rain and thundershowers in addition to blistering heat. This year they faced only the heat and the absence of bathrooms and fresh beer for miles around.

Ben Corrado, Andy Meng, Justin Rigling and a fourth friend, Brandon Schamer (who didn't accompany them from Ohio), won the greatest distance achieved for an 802.11b network. The teens, two of them 18 years old and the other 19 years old, achieved 55.1 miles using homebrewed antennas on both ends along with amplification, exceeding last year's winner by 20 miles. Then, when they established that record, they turned off their amplifiers and broke the record for an unamplified connection at the same distance. At the announcement on Sunday, the crowd rose to its feet.

The Guinness world record for Wi-Fi connection stands at 310 kilometers (about 192 miles), achieved in 2002 by Wi-Fi equipment maker Alvarion and the Swedish Space Corporation. But the companies achieved the distance by launching the equipment in a Swedish weather balloon, which many feel is not the same as a ground measurement, since there are fewer obstacles to block a WiFi signal in the stratosphere. The Swedish group also used amplification to achieve its record, but the DefCon team maintained its 55.1-mile connection even without amplification. Guinness World Records could not be reached for comment in time for publication to determine whether the DefCon team's efforts count as a distinct record.

Corrado told the crowd that they initially had no plans to attend DefCon but decided to enter the contest 19 days earlier after a "business plan" they devised fell through.

"We were going to war-drive around Cincinnati and find unencrypted wireless access points," Corrado said. "We knocked on people's doors and asked if (they) wanted us to encrypt them, and they just got all freaked out. So we were searching for other things to do with the equipment we had just purchased."

After Meng stumbled across the DefCon Wi-Fi shootout website, Corrado called Rigling and said, "Hey, dude, we're going to Las Vegas in like 19 days!"

They already had a few 9-and-a-half-foot satellite dishes that they had collected around Cincinnati over the last few years.

"We were planning on putting them up on towers behind our houses and sharing our broadband Internet connections (with people)," Corrado said, to a chorus of hoots and hollers from the crowd. But due to "parental restriction" they scrapped that plan.

"We still had the dishes laying in our backyards and we thought, what the hell. Why not?" Corrado said.

After collecting more equipment, they ran a test run, placing the stations two-and-a-half miles apart, and got a connection that was much better than any link they had ever established with laptops sitting side-by-side in their bedrooms.

When Meng's dad, a radio frequency engineer, looked at the test-run data he said, "Oh my God. They might have a chance at this. They might actually have to go to Las Vegas."

Not without Justin's father, however. Greg Rigling drove them across the country in a van, with the 10-foot satellite dish strapped to a trailer. Then he spent two days driving around Nevada's mountains helping them get a signal.

They might have achieved an even greater distance, Justin Rigling said, "but there was no road left."

For their efforts, the teens received a stack of O'Reilly books, Best Buy certificates and über-hacker badges, allowing the teens and Justin's father lifetime admission to DefCon for free.

After the awards ceremony, the three were seen in a corner of the conference room trying to sell their equipment to lighten the return trip home.

On South Beach, Exercise and NO BEER!

That's right, I haven't had a beer in over three weeks. My doctor, who is concerned over my high blood sugar, suggested that I try a low carb diet. I looked over the choices and chose South Beach. The first week in Phase one was a little rough. No carbs at all. Made the bike rides extremely challenging. My normal 17 mph avg dropped to 15mph. But I just "grannied down" , slowed down and told myself that I was burning fat not carbs. I have lost 8 lbs so far, so I am below 220 for the first time in years. I have begun phase two which allows some limited carbs and a couple glasses of red wine. I do allow some carbs on the longer (more than 90 min) rides. I really wondered about giving up beer, but so far haven't missed it, believe it or not. I feel better and have revved up my workouts now that I am seeing some real results. My goal is to be at 200 by my birthday. If I make it, I'm going to have a beer. Just not a Michelob Ultra, they have just as much maltose as a regular beer and they taste like water. Interesting story about the low carb "craze" from USA Today:

Low-carb craze loses insanity, but it's still strong

By Julie Schmit, USA TODAY

The low-carb craze is claiming casualties — and more are likely — as growth slows.

A year ago, Atkins Nutritionals couldn't crank out low-carb products fast enough. Now, online retailers are discounting them.

A year ago, entrepreneur Brad Saltzman planned to open 12 Los Angeles low-carb stores. Because of poor consumer response, he's sold one and listed his only other on eBay in June for $150,000. No bids came.

Some new low-carb products are starting off slow. One is Pepsi's Edge, the company said last week. "There will be a shakeout," says Matthew Wiant, senior vice president of Atkins, founded by the Atkins diet creator.

Low carb is still strong. Nationwide, sales of foods labeled low carb hit $1.3 billion for the 12 months ended July 10, up 283% from the period a year ago, says researcher ACNielsen. For the 13 weeks ended the same day, however, sales were up just 20% from the previous 13 weeks, when sales were up 122% from the 13 weeks before that. More than 10% of adults follow some Atkins diet vs. 3.8% 16 months ago.

Anheuser-Busch last week cited its new low-carb Michelob Ultra, in part, for a solid quarter and 1.9% jump in domestic sales to wholesalers. T.G.I. Friday's recently expanded its low-carb menu. Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream just dished up $70 million for low-fat, low-carb Silhouette Brands.

The question no longer seems to be whether the low-carb craze has topped out but where it will settle. Anheuser-Busch expects it to stop hurting beer consumption next year. Kellogg CEO Carlos Gutierrez last week said it had peaked but that carb-rich products had yet to recover.

Atkins' Wiant expects two-thirds of products introduced in the past year to be gone within two years. Mark Swartzberg, beverage analyst for Legg Mason, has more hope for low-carb beers than low-carb soft drinks.

Brad Haley, marketing chief for Carl's Jr. and Hardee's restaurants, expects low carb to become quietly ubiquitous. "If you don't have it, people will go elsewhere," he says. Carl's Jr. and Hardee's introduced lettuce-wrapped burgers last year and have added more low-carb items since. Sales have leveled, but the products attracted new customers, Haley says.

As often happens when industries grow superfast, little players suffer first when growth slows. Sales at HealthyLifeStyles, with two California low-carb stores, are down 35% from the peak late last year, President Rick Branchini says.

Saltzman jumped into low carb just when big foodmakers and supermarkets did — hurting specialty stores. He counts his losses at about $200,000. "The market changed — fast," he says.