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Gphone vs. iPhone: The security debate begins
Gphone vs. iPhone: The security debate begins
It wasn't long after Google announced its long-anticipated mobile plans this week that a debate emerged about the prospective security of the project's Linux-based platform. Can the open-source model for the platform, now known as Android, produce secure code? Will phones based on Android, dubbed "Gphones" by many, be more or less secure than Apple's iPhone, which has been developed using proprietary software? What will Android's developers be able to do to stop authors of malicious code from capitalizing on its openness?
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Honey, I shrunk the desktop
Every geek needs a large power-hungry supercomputer, right? Wrong. French company Linutop offers a tiny machine - the Linutop - no bigger than a mid-sized paperback novel.
Teens using steroids cheat themselves and their health
The measure of success in any sport is how well you use what you have to win, says Ken Locker, a certified athletic trainer at Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas. "It's easy for someone to cheat and win," he adds. "With steroids, you're tricking your body. You're creating something that's not you, and that's why you're cheating." But in the sports world, from high school on up, the focus often is more on competition and less on following the rules. "It's not just the kids," says Mr. Locker, who knows of a freshman at a small university who tested positive for steroids. Regulations required the school to tell his parents what had happened. They weren't surprised. "The parents admitted to giving it to him," Mr. Locker says. "They wanted him to get a scholarship." Is there a way to get a scholarship without going the steroid route? Sure, Mr.
The thrilling woes of that thing called 'love story'
It's the only off note in this otherwise irresistible anthology of 27 love stories sure to make hearts flutter well beyond Valentine's Day. My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead was edited by Eugenides at Dave Eggers's behest, to benefit the Chicago chapter of 826 National, his writing programs for teens, a cause as worthy as amour. Eugenides's point is that love stories – as opposed to love itself – thrive on obstructions: sparrows, dead or alive. As he explains in his introduction, they "depend on disappointment" and "nearly without exception, give love a bad name." What he doesn't mention is that reading love stories thrillingly combines the pleasures of prurience and schadenfreude. Unlike Zadie Smith, who commissioned new stories by hip young writers for "The Book of Other People," her anthology for Eggers's literacy project, Eugenides sought suggestions rather than submissions from contemporary authors.
RICKY GERVAIS
He certainly couldn't be less starry in the flesh. He suits his blank dressing room. Everything about him is everymanish and mundane except his talent and achievements - the Baftas, Golden Globes and Emmys that attest to his success in Britain and America. Gervais's live show is called Fame. He appears on stage wearing a crown and performs in front of his name spelled out in giant lights. "Too much?" he asks with a 100-watt twinkle. The stage set also includes a giant Emmy. This has been constructed with a shelf to hold a can of lager and a copy of a paper containing news of Gervais's new home in Hampstead. During the show he feigns outrage at inaccurate reporting - how dare they write his house cost £2.5 million? It was a million more than that. Celebrity appalled Gervais before he became well-known.
Debunking the Reagan Myth
That's why conservatives are still writing books denouncing F.D.R. and the New Deal; they understand that the way Americans perceive bygone eras, even eras from the seemingly distant past, affects politics today. And it's also why the furor over Barack Obama's praise for Ronald Reagan is not, as some think, overblown. The fact is that how we talk about the Reagan era still matters immensely for American politics. Bill Clinton knew that in 1991, when he began his presidential campaign. "The Reagan-Bush years," he declared, "have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect." Contrast that with Mr.
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