shahine.com/omar/

I know I said I would wait for the Toshiba Gigabeat S and Urge… I lied. I do not want a big 30GB player. I want impossibly small and I want it now!

I knew this would happen too. If only there had been a betting pool!

Government to Scale Back Mad Cow Testing – Yahoo! News

Despite the confirmation of a third case of mad cow disease, the government intends to scale back testing for the brain-wasting disorder blamed for the deaths of more than 150 people in Europe.

[snip]

The testing program detected an infected cow in Alabama last week, and further analysis confirmed Monday that the animal had mad cow disease.

Still, a reduction in testing has been in the works for months. The department’s chief veterinarian, John Clifford, mentioned it when he announced the new case of mad cow disease.

“As we approach the conclusion of our enhanced surveillance program, let me offer a few thoughts,” Clifford said, explaining that the U.S. will follow international standards for testing.

Agriculture Secretary
Mike Johanns pointed out testing is not a food safety measure. Rather, it’s a way to find out the prevalence of the disease.

So let me get this straight – we increased testing after finding possible mad cow case. The increased testing found a mad cow case. And now it is being reduced… because it was planned all along.

This might explain things:

Consumer groups want every animal to be tested, said Gary Weber, head of regulatory affairs for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association in Denver.

“It’s not cost-effective; it’s not necessary,” Weber said. “The consumers we’ve done focus groups with are comfortable that this is a very rare disease and we’ve got safeguards in place.

I bet I know what happened at this focus group:

Q: We’re thinking of doing lots of unnecessary testing for a super rare disease called bovine spongiform encephalopathy, which may raise the price of beef to $20 a pound. How do you feel about that?

But that’s just my guess.

TV Barn

Update: Mark Jeffries points out, and I can confirm, that HBO’s policy hasn’t changed. The network doesn’t take any money for the products seen on its air. “We actually had to call Porsche to get clearance to mention that car in our show,” says an insider. Still, it’s kind of funny.

Interesting. I really thought it was. I wonder what the real deal is…

I took this photo last week – a few color/level adjustments in Photoshop made it all better:

This afternoon, I went to the Johns Hopkins Knowledge for the World Tour event in San Francisco.

It consisted of some opening remarks, 2 panels, and a dinner. At this specific event, there were three panels offered: Medical Horizons Countering the Nuclear Threat, The Mysteries of History. My gf and I attended Medical Horizons and The Mysteries of History.

The panels were staffed with professors and other people at the top of the field. It was quite refreshing to be attending something that didn’t have to do about tech – and to be in a lecture setting again!

At dinner, I ended up sitting at the same table as Nick Jones, the new Dean of the School of Engineering, and Justin Haynes, an Associate Professor, who apparently is doing some exciting work using nano technology to deliver chemo to only tumors. We had a few chats… great people.

If you have anything to do with Hopkins, or even not at all, consider going to one of these events!

Q. How do I quickly add a RSS feed to Live.com?

Easy!

Step 0: Install the Windows Live Toolbar and then open Internet Explorer

Step 1: Go to a website that offers Web Feeds, like this one, and click the orange button.

Step 3: Click the info bar to go to Live.com

Step 4: Click My Stuff to see your feed.

Feel free to drag the feed to the bottom, and add it to the rest of the great content that you have on your page!

‘Cyberviolence’ Plagues South Korea – Yahoo! News

One of the most well-known recent cases of online humiliation involved a woman who failed to clean up after her dog defecated inside a subway car last year. Another passenger took a photo with a mobile phone and posted it, drawing widespread condemnation from Internet users.

Now, law enforcement and the government are taking action. Trying to prevent anonymous attacks, the government said in December it would require Web sites to confirm users’ real names before they can post.

Many South Korean Web sites already require users to enter their national identification numbers to get accounts, which are verified through a government system.

The government says a bill on the real-name authentication will be submitted to the National Assembly in the first half of this year.

Wow… a national online verified identification system. I wonder if this has been controversial there. Does anyone know?

By now you’ve probably started to hear about what my team has been working on: Windows Live Toolbar.

Here’s the full press release, including details about our acquisition of the popular Onfolio.

I can already guess the question on your mind: will the Onfolio features be free? The answer is Yes! That question, and others, are answered in the Microsoft Acquisition FAQ.

Here’s where you will be able to download all of it (any minute/hour now): http://ideas.live.com.

If you haven’t checked this site in a while, you should visit again – new stuff has been added, and will continue to trickle in regularly. At Windows Live, we like to ship frequently!!

Oh yeah… in case you haven’t figured it out yet, the MSN Search Toolbar is now known as the Windows Live Toolbar. Same great team, even better product, slightly longer name!

So, here’s the part where I personalize this entry by telling you what I’ve been working on. Well, since I left the Entourage for Mac team last May, and joined the Toolbar team:

MSN Search Toolbar and Windows Desktop Search 2.6
This actually shipped last November, but I didn’t really talk about it because this was mostly a release for corporate/enterprise customers. That said, a lot of the work there carried over.

In the release, I worked with my excellent feature teams to split up our products so that we could have separate installers for MSN Search Toolbar and Windows Desktop Search. In addition, I shepherd our team to becoming Microsoft Update compliant – so now, you may see Toolbar updates when you go to Microsoft Update, which we fondly call MU. Haven’t been to MU yet? Visit it today! It’s the way to get updates for all your Microsoft products in one shot!

Along the way, I also helped make our product MUI compliant (I think only IT admins know what that means) as well as to help redesign the experience you see when you run our product for the first time. Phew! It was a lot of plumbing work, and it was pretty hairy at times, but it sets us up in a better position for the future!

Windows Live Toolbar Beta
In this release, I worked on the Feed Detector button. When you visit a page with an RSS or ATOM feed offered in the headers, the button lights up and allows you to add it straight to your Live.com page. We also do some nifty things to make it so that if your feed title is simply “ATOM” or “RSS”, that we show something slightly more helpful to the user. Speaking of Live.com, check out the changes there!

Huh? That’s it? Well, for me for this release it is. The rest of my team worked really hard on all these great things like the Component Manager – so that you can go crazy managing which buttons are installed, changing the branding, working on the Onfolio integration, and plenty more.

(Unfortunately, it’s midnight, and I’ve been up since 6am, and I have to wake up at 6am again – so I’ll have to cut this short for now!)

This is a beta release, so we’re just scratching the surface. We’ve got some neat things lined up coming in the future. I’m proud of the work we’ve accomplished, and I think you’ll be impressed with what’s coming down the pipeline. These are going to be exciting times!