Elliott C. Back: Technology FTW!

This year’s Black Friday tragedy is a Walmart stampede which left a 34-year-old temp worker (Jdimytai Damour) dead and four shoppers (one eight months pregnant) injured. 2000 shopper stormed the Queens-area Walmart gates at 5 AM after chanting “push the doors in.” People at the scene reported chaos:

“They were jumping over the barricades and breaking down the door,” said Pat Alexander. “Everyone was screaming. You just had to keep walking on your toes to keep from falling over.”

Kimberly Cribbs said “When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, ‘I’ve been on line since Friday morning!’ They kept shopping.”

The deals included a $798 Samsung 50-inch Plasma HDTV, a Bissel Compact Upright Vacuum for $28 and Men’s Wrangler Tough Jeans for $8.

The Wallmart in question, in Long Island NY

I was wondering why this would happen. I’ve been in huge crowds–concerts, for example, regularly have many thousands of rowdy, excited riotous fans–but they’re always carefully controlled to minimize the chance of a trampling rush. The Walmart itself is not in a particularly bad part of NY; the average salaries, education, age, and racial composition are more or less normal.

On the other hand, there’s a thread on slickdeals where seancashmere disagrees:

Yeah, really and truly, the people who live in Valley Stream and some points to the East have nice homes and are educated enough, but the people who shop at the Valley Stream Walmart are terrible. They are under educated and poor. Many come from Jamaica and South Ozone Park, Queens, the projects, Rosedale and the surrounding areas…

I don’t buy that particular argument; any tightly-packed large crowd is dangerous, whether filled with the upper or lower crusts. Pictures of the scene show the problem: a small doorway, and way too many people.

A picture of the crowd waiting for Walmart to open

Interestingly, there are other incidents driven by crowds, bargains, and human rage. For example, see Fatal shooting followed toy store brawl about a Black Friday skirmish inside a Toys-R-Us.

Just listen to Gizmodo (oh how I hate to say they’re right on this one)–You Don’t Really Want This Crap. Deals aren’t to die for.

I was somewhat scared when I noticed this list of usernames / passwords for MySpace. Yeah, someone actually managed to hack my MySpace account, which is more incredible given that I don’t ever log into it:

Myspace hacked accounts 3/20/08
Here a list of myspace accounts and passwords

Example:
Username : Passwords get it

MySpace is pretty advanced in this regard; somehow they detected that my account had been compromised and when I logged in now to change the password, I received this neat message warning me:

MySpace Announcement: Your account has been phished!

What can I do?
Change your password. And don’t use your current password ever again. Why do I care? We’ve blocked your account until you change your password. This means you can’t send a message, post a bulletin, send a comment or add a friend until you’ve changed your password.

What does “phished” mean?
“Phished” means that someone stole the email address & password that you use to login to MySpace. They might be sending out messages, comments or bulletins as you!

How did this happen?
You went to a fake page that asked for your MySpace login email and password, and you gave them your info. Only login to www.myspace.com. Learn more

I’ve changed all my users and passwords now, but still it’s a tiring experience…

Normally I’d be uninterested in the story of how three New Zealand teen allegedly murdered 14 year old John Hapeta in New Zealand. According to the New Zealand Herald, “Two men charged with the murder of 14-year-old John Hapeta allegedly armed themselves with a revolver-style pistol and a claw hammer when they went to his house looking for drugs and cash. John Hapeta was celebrating his friend’s 15th birthday at his home in Justamere Place, Weymouth, when the attack occurred. Police allege the three went to John’s home on August 12 with the intention of robbing what they thought was a ‘tinnie’ house. The draft police summary of facts said Tumata and Williams pulled black bandannas over their faces and walked up to the house, confronted a man and allegedly shouted, ‘Where’s the drugs, where’s the drugs?’”

The story now becomes interesting when Judge David Harvey bans online mention of the accused’s names. No one is sure why print media (which is searchable, through interfaces like Lexis Nexus) gets special treatment here. I certainly disagree, and I’m free to publish whatever I’d like, as a journalist, including the names of the accused.

Anytime anyone wants to suppress totally free speech, I say RESIST!!

As you know, Marijuana or Cannabis is illegal drug in the US with medical properties that have made the subject of much recent research. With over 69 million Americans over the age of 12 who have tried Marijuana, it is by far the most commonly used illegal drug in the United States.

Did you know that:

• Marijuana contains more than 400 chemicals, including most of the harmful substances found in tobacco smoke. Smoking one marijuana cigarette deposits about four times more tar into the lungs than a filtered tobacco cigarette. (Drug Enforcement Administration)
• Risk of a heart attack is five times higher than usual in the hour after smoking marijuana. (Harvard University, Marijuana & Heart Attacks, Washington Post, 3/3/2000)
• Reaction time for motor skills, such as driving, is reduced by 41% after smoking one joint and is reduced 63% after smoking two joints.

Still, there is substantial belief that Marijuana is harmless or that it is valuable as a therapeutic drug for cancer, AIDS, or depression. There is some evidence that a synthetic cannabinoid derived from THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol) named Dronabinol, can help with Alzheimer in the elderly. The most common reason for a “legal prescription” of Marijuana (the so-called medical marijuana legal in California) is to relieve pain.

Reuters today reported on a story that will make you cringe, though. Heavy marijuana use shrinks brain talks about a study published in the American Medical Association’s journal Archives of General Psychiatry by two Australian researchers looking at men who had smoked at least five joints a day for 20 years. Brain scans indicated their hippocampus and amygdala were smaller compared to nonusers:

The hippocampus regulates memory and emotion, while the amygdala plays a critical role in fear and aggression.

“These findings challenge the widespread perception of cannabis as having limited or no harmful effects on (the) brain and behavior,” said Murat Yucel of ORYGEN Research Centre and the University of Melbourne, who led the study. “Like with most things, some people will experience greater problems associated with cannabis use than others,” Yucel said in an e-mail. “Our findings suggest that everyone is vulnerable to potential changes in the brain, some memory problems and psychiatric symptoms if they use heavily enough and for long enough.”

Among the 15 heavy marijuana users in the study, the hippocampus volume was 12 percent less and the amygdala volume was 7 percent less than in 16 men who were not marijuana users, the researchers said.

Criticism of the study centers around the fact that these men are extremely heavy users; had they been smokers or alcoholics, the effects would certainly have been more pronounced. Note that I am not a medical doctor, and this cannot constitute medical advice, but my opinion on Marijuana would be to generally avoid it. It’s clear that it’s harmless in moderation and small amounts, but over time it seems as if it can have profound effects, dumbing down your brain and numbing your nervous system. What do you think? Is there a cost, and is it worth it?

Hans Reiser was recently convicted for first degree murder for killing his wife in 2006. The six month trial and three days of Jury deliberation reached the guilty verdict primarily based on circumstantial evidence and poor testimony from Hans Reiser:

In a murder case with no body, no crime scene, no reliable eyewitness and virtually no physical evidence, the prosecution began the trial last November with a daunting task ahead. By the time prosecutor Paul Hora rested his case February 14, he had called some 60 witnesses, but presented mostly circumstantial evidence demonstrating animus between Reiser and his wife, and suspicious behavior by the defendant following Nina’s disappearance in September, 2006.

The turning point in the trial came when Reiser took the stand in his own defense March 3.

In his 11 days of testimony, Reiser offered lengthy and verbose explanations for every piece of circumstantial evidence. But Reiser’s version of events often drew disbelieving head shakes from jurors — and occasional smirks from the trial judge.

Namesys, who develops the ReiserFS and Reiser4 linux filesystems, is essentially dead after the verdict. The Namesys website is down due to a DNS problem, and a potential private sale of the company found no buyers. Worse, ReiserFS sucks, according to Kerneltrap:

Reiserfs might be suitable for very specific applications, but to use it in production machine, you need to have some guts.

My last reiserfs partition was blown up two days ago, because of a bad sector, plus a fatal oops, looping endlessly. This was the second time, and the last one, as none of my ext3 filesystems *ever* had similar problems, despite numerous other bad sector issues. Not mentioning the funny “recovery” tool, which generally finishes to trash your data.

And in a bit of off-the-mark dark humour, an anonymous Wikipedia editor added a new column to Comparison of file systems:

There are some irregularities surrounding the Hans Reiser trial, namely that “Sean Sturgeon, a one-time friend of Reiser, and alleged ex-lover of Nina, confessed to killing eight other people and leaving a ninth for dead. However, he claims he did not kill Nina. According to preliminary court testimony, Sturgeon dated Nina, but she broke off the relationship in January 2006.”

Update: Wired is reporting that Hans Reiser is offering the location of Nina’s body in exchange for a reduced sentence. Interestingly, he refused a deal of an “11-year term in exchange to pleading guilty to manslaughter” before the trial started.