US Army detain Pulitzer Prize Winner for Undeclared 'insurgency' charges

According to BBC news:

The Pentagon says additional evidence has come to light proving Bilal Hussein is a "terrorist media operative" who infiltrated the news agency.

US officials say he had previously aroused suspicion because he was often at the scene of insurgent attacks as they occurred.

He did not disclose what the new evidence is.

"Whenever we ask to see what's so convincing we get back something that isn't convincing at all," said AP's lawyer Dave Tomlin.

Calls for his release have been backed by press freedom groups such as the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Is the US loosing 'it'?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7103239.stm

Overclocking nVidia 8600GT

I just completed days of marking. To be frank, 3 more 1500words papers before I am done. But I am DONE with markings. Today is one full day without compulsory classes or meetings. So I am going to overclock my new system. Treating it as an experience, I am going forward with afterburning my $100 card rather than a $225 one.

Overclocking is considered prettty 'hardcore' for gaming. I used (something like 15 years ago) to see friends doing it by modifying the internal clock speed and its pretty scary. Today there are lots of utilities to help you and it looks more manageable.

I go for websites recommending utility and found – Rivatuner. Can I trust the post? I am not sure. But I see the same utility recommended by another post, which is enough to tell me that – even if its not the best, at least it works.

Following the guide on 3Dguru, its pictorial guide and detailed step by step instructions make it easy to follow. First is to setup some fan speed launcher. I do not know why but it must have to do with the heat produced in overclocking? Next is to overclock the chip. There are two clear parameters: memory frequency and core frequency. I am not sure which is the 1000?Hz referring to. But what will be will be.

The pdf that accompanied XFX 8600GT suggested overclocking memory first, at 5?Hz at a time. 3Dguru did not mention, but showed an example of overclocking to what other users have achieved. I followed the pdf’s approach. It looks safer.

I did, but did not. I followed the incremental approach, but not 5?Hz at a time. More like 10-20, larger at the beginning, and smaller after a hundred or so. But 3dguru and pdf suggest having a video benchmarking utility will be nice. I downloaded something which I conveniently found – Video Card Stability Test (VCST).

Now I am able to start the process of overclocking. I raise the memory frequency gradually, while I am tempted to do both at the same time. I can probably raise a bit without getting near ‘instability?’ I raise the core frequency by 30 as well. But that’s it. I continue to focus on memory clock.

VCST suggested stress testing between 10-30 mins. But if I am going to do it at 5?Hz at a time, its going to take forever. Benchmarking only takes 3 mins. So I did that instead of running test (Start) at every change.

My system finally ‘hangs’ at memory clock of 969. I was a bit freaked. But reset the system ‘logically.’ It was fine. It restarted as per normal and reset to default clock speed. So I use the previous stable clock speed of 951 and ran the stress test (Start) for slightly more than 10 mins.

Next, I did the same for Core clock speed. It hangs at 73?. I restarted the system at set the Core clock at 721. Then I ran a stress test for 20+ minutes. Every works fine for the 20+ minutes.

End results: Core 721, Memory 951.

I am still testing the system by running the stress test for several hours.

Rig:
MB GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L P35+ICH9
XFX PVT84JUDD3 8600GT 256MB
CPU INTEL|C2D E6550 2.33G 65N 4M
MEM 1Gx2|KST DII667 KVR667D2K2/2GR

Big fat and short american car

Something about cars in America is... they are big! Not all the cars. But there are more big cars than what I see in any part of Asia. I heard the same comments from some Europeans too.

Its not a pleasant experience to park beside such big cars. They take up a lot of space in the parking lots, just like when someone take up the whole sit on a bus. When you part in, you have to pay a lot of unnecessary attention to them. Even if you park as per normal, you may find that you door can touch their fat body while within an inch of comfortably open.

On the highway, I also notice that two types of cars will not give way to you. One is the sporty cars which is very short. Two is the big fat cars.

This is the part of the culture which is strange. The short cars are so that its difficult to get into them. You have to bend your body and try to enter the seats, which is not enough. You then have to bend your knees as well. And if you are not careful, your head has likelihood of knocking against the door frame, which is your head is danger, not the door frame. And they are almost short enough to tempt you to walk all over them. They are not of the right proportion. The big fat cars are over sized for a lot of parking lots. They also drink fuel for pleasure. Which is not a proper behavior of cars. Cars are meant to bring you around, not to get themselves drunk when you are not looking. If your chauffeur is like that. You would have gotten him fired.

So I hope relevant people who are reading this would contemplate on the words if you own either a short or big fat car!