5:04 PM
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/11/04/h1n1.military.vaccine/index.html?eref=rss_latest
One MAJOR problem for the US military is that more than 75% of the 17- to 24-year-olds cannot serve in the military even if they wanted to. The major component of this is obesity, though others do not qualify because they are too sickly, too little mental capacity (bottom 10%), have too many kids, or use illegal drugs. Young people who cannot run or do push ups or pull ups cannot join the military, and unfortunately more and more young Americans fall into that category every year:
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/11/military_unfityouths_recruiting_110309w/
Iraq's security forces have been relying on a hand-held wand to detect bombs and weapons..even though the US military and technical experts say that the wand is useless. The Iraqi government bought over 1,500 of the wands, for up to $60k each, though suicide bombers seem to be able to walk right past the wands without being detected. The wand maker claims that it can find guns, ammo, drugs, truffles, human bodies, and ivory at distances up to a kilometer, underground, through walls, underwater, or even from airplanes 3 miles high! Unfortunately, when a foundation offered the company $1 million if it could prove that the device could detect explosives, the wand making company never responded:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/world/middleeast/04sensors.html
The US is worried about a horse and bat disease in Australia because it has an extremely high fatality rate among humans that come into contact with the animals. The worry is that terrorists can infect bats with the disease and release the bats near big cities to wipe out the popluation:
http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dhs-supports-research-aussie-horse-and-bat-disease
Israeli commandos seized a ship today that contained "hundreds of tons" of weapons that they said was going from Iran to Labanon's Hezbollah guerrillas:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/11/04/world/AP-ML-Israel-Arms-Boat.html?_r=1
Microsoft wanted to reduce the number of annoying security measures that Windows 7 delivers when users install software, but a security advisor found that they went overboard in their changes to the UAC so Windows 7 is actually MORE vulnerable to malware infection than Vista! In fact, Windows 7 blocked only 1 out of 8 Trojans from executing!
http://www.infoworld.com/d/windows/windows-7-more-vulnerable-malware-vista-says-researcher-891?source=IFWNLE_nlt_daily_2009-11-04
Analysis says that Apple will earn $7 billion in additional revenue when they bring the iPhone to Verizon next year. Interesting that Verizon will only subsidize $300 of the iPhone cost when AT&T currently subsidizes $450 per iPhone, but Apple will make more profit due to increased sales volume:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobilize/apple-ink-verizon-iphone-deal-next-year-analyst-says-959?source=IFWNLE_nlt_mobilehdwr_2009-11-04
Alcatel-Lucent is showing off their an LTE car, which should show up in cars on the market in about 3 years. Passengers can watch TV shows on their home DVRs, play video games over the Internet, monitor traffic conditions, and even turn on the lights or air conditioning in their home while in their car:
http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2009/11/alcatel-lucent_unveils_connect.html
AT&T is suing Verizon over its "There's a map for that" ads. While Verizon is correctly showing the map of 3G coverage for AT&T, AT&T says that they still have 2G service in the white or blank areas of the map:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/t-suing-verizon-over-theres-map-ads/2009-11-03?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal
1.7 million T-Mobile customers across the US were without phone or data service for quite some time last night:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/t-mobile-service-outage-affects-1-7-million/2009-11-04?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal