A single image taken with a camera like my Android G1 can contain a lot of information as shown below:

EXIF Information from an Android G1 Photo

Removing EXIF Data in Ubuntu

This is a quick and easy way to remove EXIF data from JPG files from a Bash prompt in Ubuntu or other Debian derived versions of Linux.  This method will let you remove the EXIF date from all images in a directory.

First, install the jhead package via apt-get.  Open a terminal window and type:

sudo apt-get install jhead

After jhead is installed you may want to review all the ways you can use this powerful tool by typing:

man jhead

You can use jhead to add/remove/modify information in JPG files but for now, all we are going to do is strip out all the information from the file that is not needed to render the image itself.  This may be more than you feel you need but it will give you the most privacy that I know how to provide.

To remove all EXIF info from a single image just open a terminal window and type:

jhead -purejpg /path/to/image.jpg

You can also use wild cards so you can use:

jhead -purejpg /path/to/*.jpg

or

jhead -purejpg /path/to/*.JPG

Since the jhead tool only acts on jpeg files you can do an entire directory of files – regardless of the case of the file extension using xargs like this:

ls | xargs jhead -purejpg

from within the directory of photos.

The boy claims he did hear calls, but deliberately ignored them.

“Why didn’t you come out?” his father asked during the interview.

After a small silence, Falcon said he stayed hidden because he thought “we did this for a show“.
Another awkward silence followed, before his father said “yeah”, before asking his son again why he didn’t come out.

The CNN interviewer asked for clarification on Falcon’s remarks, but his father dodged the question.

via Hoax fears after Falcon Heene hid ‘for a show’ | The Australian.

Toffoli

Lauren Schenkman for Inside Science News Service reports that physicists Lev Levitin and Tommaso Toffoli at Boston University have declared a speed limit on computing, no matter how small components get.

Levitan

In the early 1980s, Levitin singled out a quantum elementary operation, the most basic task a quantum computer could carry out. In a paper published today in the journal Physical Review Letters, Levitin and Toffoli present an equation for the minimum sliver of time it takes for this elementary operation to occur. This establishes the speed limit for all possible computers.

“From a theorist’s perspective, it’s good to know that fundamental limits are there, sort of an absolute ceiling. You may say it’s disappointing that we can’t build infinitely fast computers, but as a picture of the world, if you have a theory of physics allows for infinitely fast computation, there could be a problem with that theory.” – Scott Aaronson, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The GOP website has a cute rotating banner at the top with GOP spelled out using a person’s head in place of the capital O. When I first arrived there was a lovely black woman smiling at me from the banner. I refreshed the page and got a dead black man and then a white woman. I kept refreshing, and counting, and finally on my twelfth refresh I saw a white man. I do not discount the presence of women and ethnic minorities in the Republican party in any way. I am, however, interested in marketing spin and how numbers play out in the real world.

I decided to deconstruct the banner and see how it worked. Its a very straight forward rotation based on image URLs stored in an XML file so I grabbed the XML file and downloaded all the images. Thats how I got the count listed in the opening paragraph. The XML file has images numbered from 01 through 44 but only thirtythree images total.

The thirtythree images in rotation are shown below:

Of course, I HAD to download the missing images just to see what images the GOP decided to exclude from rotation. Those thirteen are included below.

And my two favorite of the excluded are these:

Favorite Reject #1

Favorite Reject #2

Leave it to Microsoft to kick itself in the gonads just days before a huge product launch. This particular incident doesn’t even involve Windows or any Microsoft product, but a subsidiary that probably few people associate with Redmond.

Some background: As any T-Mobile Sidekick user will tell you, for the past week they’ve been unable to get their e-mail or other data because of an outage at Danger, the company that (allegedly) manages the Sidekick database. On Saturday T-Mobile admitted what no Sidekick user wanted to hear: Danger had lost the data.

via Microsoft screwup puts T-Mobile users in Danger | Adventures in IT – InfoWorld.

There is a lot more to read at John Mac’s blog and at http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/.

Researchers have demonstrated a penny-sized “nuclear battery” that produces energy from the decay of radioisotopes.

Nuclear Battery

As radioactive substances decay, they release charged particles that when properly harvested can create an electrical current.

Nuclear batteries have been in use for military and aerospace applications, but are typically far larger.

The University of Missouri team says that the batteries hold a million times as much charge as standard batteries.

They have developed it in an attempt to scale down power sources for the tiny devices that fall under the category of micro- and nano-electromechanical systems (Mems and Nems).

Read more at  BBC NEWS | Technology | Tiny ‘nuclear batteries’ unveiled.

“I was not sucking his d*** – and it’s pretty obvious that wasn’t the case … you only have to look at the mark on my chest,” she said.

Allyson White

“Clearly I had my seatbelt on, so it’s impossible that I’d be leaning over sucking his d*** unless he is hung like a donkey or I’ve got a f****** rubber neck.

“If it was true I’d just cop it sweet and think ‘how embarassing, I got caught sucking someone’s d***’ - but it is not true and that’s what is p****** me off.

“It didn’t happen like that at all – he was just going too fast.”

Police told in Thursday’s Northern Territory News how they believe a driver crashed his car while involved in “amorous activities” with his female passenger.

They said the 33-year-old man was distracted by the woman and veered off the road, smashing his single cab Hilux ute into a concrete drain on Pioneer Rd in Humpty Doo.

But Ms White said it was a lie and she wanted to set the record straight.

Even the unnamed driver’s statement to police had no hints of any fellatio taking place.

“I don’t understand where that story has come from,” she said.

“It may have looked bad when police first arrived as my girls were hanging out all over the place. I also had a $5 note wedged between my boobs so they probably just assumed I was a sex worker or something and he’d already paid me.

“But $5 is a bit cheap for a head job.”

via No oral sex, says ute crash waitress – Northern Territory News.

via Scary: Bullet Makers Can’t Keep Up With Demand | Rights and Liberties | AlterNet.

via Sarah Wootton: At last some sense on suicide – Commentators, Opinion – The Independent.