Tomorrow Tom is going back to school. He’s not particularly happy about this, but that’s the way it is.
Hopefully this year he’ll be able to cope better with all the other children around him – he’s very playful when he knows you, but he is very shy and withdrawn with persons and children he doesn’t know, especially if they are older…
From an article in the NY Times, it seems that Visa is dropping CardSystems Solutions as a credit card processor.
Quote :
Visa USA says that it will stop allowing payment processor CardSystems Solutions to handle its transactions, months after procesor left records of millions of cardholders at risk for fraud; Visa official says that CardSystems has not corrected, and cannot at this point correct, failure to provide proper data security for those accounts; cardholders and merchants should not be affected by change; Visa notes that independent investigation found that payment processor had improperly stored cardholder data and did not have proper controls in place.
Mastercard is still evaluating what it will do and is following closely what CSS is doing to improve its processes.
Quote from the CRYPTO-GRAM newsletter from August 15, by Bruce Schneier :
“MasterCard International Inc. is taking a different tack with
CardSystems. The credit card company expects CardSystems to develop a
plan for improving its security by Aug. 31, ‘and as of today, we are
not aware of any deficiencies in its systems that are incapable of
being remediated,’ spokeswoman Sharon Gamsin said.
Scheiers view on CardSystems
So it seems that at least something is happening. No news on the law front though.
I am still playing Guild Wars, I am even in a Guild – Team Uppercut. However, with the birth or our son Sam it’s been slow going – I can only play an hour or so most every days.
This is exactly the reason why I did not pick a MMORPG game that you have to pay monthly. I’ve only payed the one fee for all this fun.
When I joined my guild (as second member and officer !) me and the ‘master’ were ahead of most of our team mates. Now I’m the one waaaaayy back at level 14, while all the others have already ascended (for the non-GW players, this means that they have gone past level 20 after some very hard tests).
Still, can’t complain, when I’m in a spot of trouble they come over and help me out, and that very hard mission that I had trouble doing with henchies (henchman, non-player characters that you can hire) or with a PU group (a pick-up group is a group of people who don’t know each other who usually don’t fit in very well together) suddenly flies past!
So yes, Guild Wars still kicks serious backside for me !
In a Cnet/Reuters News item, CardSystems is quoted as ‘facing imminent extinction’.
Credit card giant Visa USA said this week it was cutting off CardSystems as a Visa network participant due to the data breach, apparently the largest ever of its kind.
“With that staring us in the face, it certainly means we would go out of business because, if you can’t process with a major brand such as Visa, you can’t process at all,” CardSystems Chief Executive John Perry told Reuters.
I feel only sad about the fact that if CardSystems goes bankrupt, all those people who were affected by the errors made by the people in CardSystems will probably have nobody to file complaint against.
San-Francisco based Napo Pharmaceuticals has created a novel new drug against diarrhea which is quite unique in the way it works AND in how it is to be sold :
Crofelemer is unique in how it works because traditional anti-diarrhea medications like Lomotil and Loperamide decrease bowel motility, and are absorbed by the bloodstream. Crofelemer works locally, only in the gut, to stop the flow of “excess†water. (I use the term “excess†loosely because the water often lost in diarrhea cannot afford to be lost, and isn’t actually “excess†in the traditional sense of the word.)
This different mechanism of action is fantastic news for children whose immune systems haven’t fully developed, and AIDS patients whose immune systems are compromised: traditional anti-motility drugs can’t be used by either population because of their decreased immune response: allowing pathogens to linger longer in the GI tract can allow them to grow and infect the gut more than simply excreting them out. Crofelemer is unique because it doesn’t prevent bowel movements, it simply prevents diarrhea.
This drug discovered in the third world also has the greatest potential there: millions of children die every year from chronic diarrhea, and diarrhea can weaken those patients already dealing with AIDS, leading to quicker, higher mortality rates for that disease as well.
Aside from their drug being unique, Napo’s approach to making profits on Crofelemer is unique as well. The traditional model for creating profitable drugs is based on a first-world clientele: create a drug, and keep its prices high until the patent(s) expire to make up for the cost of bringing the drug to market. (Which can often reach and exceed half a billion dollars.) Napo, however, is skipping the first world and going right for the third world where the largest need and potential customer base is.
This could be great news for all the children and sick persons in third-world countries who can ill afford to lose (waste) any water they managed to acquire. There are also advantages too, for example for persons afflicted with the ‘irritable bowel syndrome’, aids patients and others who cannot digest or use the other existing drugs.
I think they are on to something here – selling drugs cheaply to large masses of people instead of only to rich people. PolyScience calls them the ‘Henry Fords of the medical industry’. Wait and see, is what I say.
In two other news items, Napo has licenced their drug to the Indian drug manfucturer Glenmark, with the drug being available in 2007.
Glenmark said it would have the exclusive right to develop the drug in more than 140 markets, outside North America, Japan, China and Europe.
Glenmark expects to launch the product in India and many other markets in 2007. It will pay Napo royalties ranging from “high single digits to early teens” on net sales of the product.
Glenmark said it will also participate in Napo’s latest round of financing by investing $1 million in its preferred stock.
“This collaboration will allow Napo to bring a novel therapy for these debilitating and sometimes deadly diseases to both traditional Western markets and resource constrained areas of the world,” Napo CEO Lisa Conte said.
“Glenmark currently manufactures several US FDA approved drugs, and they have the know-how to successfully deliver medicines to very large populations, which should ultimately provide for beneficial economies of scale and reduced cost of goods,” she added.
There have been a number of articles about growing muscle tissue from separate cells (aka ‘meat’) – separately from an animal, that is.
Writing in the journal Tissue Engineering, Matheny said scientists could grow cells from the muscle tissue of cattle, pigs, poultry or fish in large flat sheets on thin membranes. These sheets of cells would be grown and stretched, then removed from the membranes and stacked to increase thickness and resemble meat.
The advantages are several : you control which nutrients go in or are left out (can anyone say Omega3 for better cholestorol ?), and if taken up worldwide, less carbon-monoxide generated if you remove all the poultry/cows/pigs and whatnot that are kept for food. Also a lot less chances of any outside diseases and bad food given to the livestock poisening you.
But honestly, the idea is weird. One commenter from Ars.Technica said : “I don’t know wether to laugh, cry or barf”.
Still, it’s just something that you have to think about, and logically, hey why not ? I eat quorn all the time, which is a mycoprotein from the fungi family, aka mushroom and mold stuff. If I can eat that, why not this ?
Yup. Gonna have to think about this.
After writing the previous post on the EU voting ‘no’ to software patents, I realised that, while important for me, it’s not worth much for those people who’ve been killed and injured in the London terrorist attacks.
The survivors and their family have other things on their mind than political discussions. It certainly puts things in perspective.
My heart and support goes out to them.
In what can be said to be a very important decision, the EU parlement has voted ‘No’ to american-style software patents, maintaining the current existing legislation for each country.
On the one hand you have the big European companies saying it is a missed opportunity, as they feel they cannot hold their own against the patent-might of some big US companies without their own patents.
“There is important innovation coming out of the software industry,” Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software maker, said in Paris today before the parliament vote. “We think that innovation needs to be protected.”
On the other hand are the small developers and companies that feel they should not have to deal with embroilment in patentwars with big corporations, anywhere.
Advocates of so-called open-source software, such as the Linux operating system, had lobbied the parliament to restrict software patents because of concerns the EU would follow the U.S. approach, which gives patent protection to software and ideas such as Internet pop-up advertising. Patents can leave open-source developers and users vulnerable to infringement claims for inadvertently distributing patented methods.
I don’t believe that it will stifle innovation, as the big companies say. Rather the reverse, in fact. As what will happen to the American patent system, I wonder how long it can continue to exist in its current form ?
The news.com site has the story: a lawsuit has been filed against CardSystems (and Visa among others) seeking full disclosure of the names of the people affected. Credit Card companies have decided not to notify customers unless the accounts are actually abused.
Some 40 million cards were accessible, and some 200.000 cards are believed to have been actually ‘stolen’ (the information for the card transferred out of the company).
Seems like finally people have realised this smells a bit fishy, all this not notifying unless people are affected. Heck, smart thieves could wait a few years before charging your card – my credit card has a 5-year expiry date, so would I still check in a few years for strange purchases ?
A lawsuit has started in America, I wonder if people affected in Europe will follow (if they can, I am not up to date on law) ?
Time to talk a bit more about our two boys.
Sam has been growing rapidly, and changes weekly. Tomorrow he will be one month old, and already he looks so different to what he looked like when he was born ! He still cries a lot, but the stomach cramps do seem to be abating.
Due to the excessive heat here in Belgium (the last two weeks the temperature has risen over 30° Celcius almost every day, and we are told to be careful of our water) Sam has been very thirsty. Almost every 2 to 3 hours he was hungry (that should be thirsty) again, so not easy on mum when she wants to sleep.
So I’ve started helping out by giving Sam a bottle during the night hours. While I was afraid that Sam would not be ready to accept the bottle, he doesn’t seem to mind. Have to see how that works out when I go back to work though…
Tom has been a marvellous boy these last few weeks : he isn’t jealous of Sam, always interested in seeing what we are doing with him (changing a diaper, giving a bath) and always wants to help us take care of Sam and give him kisses. Since last week he has also started to dress himself, without any prompting from us (well, I did push a bit when Dolores was in hospital, but not since then). You could see our eyes popping out when he first came down the stairs himself, fully dressed. He was grinning, and we were grinning back like happy mad idiots.
We’re very proud of both our children !