Day: May 30, 2007

Getting Access to Gmail Accounts of the Deceased

Chris 457 views

This comes from Search Engine Roundtable who got it from this Google Groups thread.

1. Your full name and contact information, including a verifiable email address.
2. The Gmail address of the individual who passed away.
3a. The full header from an email message that you have received at your verifiable email address, from the Gmail account in question. (To obtain the header from a message in Gmail, open the message, click ‘More options,’ then click ‘Show original.’ Copy everything from ‘Delivered- To:’ through the ‘References:’ line. To obtain headers from other webmail or email providers, please refer to http://www.spamcop.com/help_with_headers/)
3b. The entire contents of the message.
4. A copy of the death certificate of the deceased.
5. A copy of the document that gives you Power of Attorney over the Gmail account.
6. If you are the parent of the individual, please send us a copy of the Birth Certificate if the Gmail account owner was under the age of 18. In this case, Power of Attorney is not required.

How Much LSD Does it Take to Kill an Elephant

Chris 5 Comments 437 views

And the blog title of the day award goes to Retrospectacle:

Most of you read the title and thought I was kidding, right? I mean, who in their right mind would give a huge dose of a psychotropic substance to an elephant, just to see what happened? Well, the year was 1962, and someone did just that. And, as icing on the cake, they got a Science paper out of it.

The subject was a 14-year-old male Indian elephant named Tusko being housed at the Lincoln Park Zoo. As previous research had suggested that high doses to LSD were needed to get perceivable effects in “lower animals,” they decided to start with a 0.1 mg/kg dose of LSD for Tusko. That came to about 297 milligrams (in 5 mL of water, injected intramuscularly) of LSD for 7000 pound Tusko. The injection was delivered via a pressurized CO2 dart gun. For comparison, the threshold dosage for an effect in people is around 20-30 micrograms and a recreational 3+ hour dose would be around 100-200 micrograms.

After injection:

“Tusko began trumpeting and rushing around the pen, a reaction not unlike the one he had shown the day before (during the placebo shot). However, this time his restlessness appeared to increase for 3 minutes after the injection; then he stopped running and showed signs of marked incoordination. He began to sway, his hindquarters buckled, and it became increasingly difficult for him to maintain himself upright. Five minutes after the injection he trumpeted, collapsed, fell heavily on his right side, defecated, and went into status epilepticus.”

Vancouver Police to Recruit via Second Life

Chris 507 views

From The Vancouver Sun:

A Vancouver police officer stands in a virtual recruitment hall typing on an invisible keyboard.

The cyber cop is busy learning to walk and move inside her new world. While she’s at it, she’s practising her PowerPoint and presentation skills.

The VPD has been prepping to become the first real police force to join the more than 6.7 million inhabitants who live, work, play and learn inside their computers — an initiative aimed at finding real-life people with computer know-how to join the force.
The Vancouver Police Department is poised to become the first real-life police force living in the virtual world. They plan to hold a Second Life recruiting session as a way to lure more tech-savvy recruits.

The Vancouver Police Department is poised to become the first real-life police force living in the virtual world. They plan to hold a Second Life recruiting session as a way to lure more tech-savvy recruits.

On Thursday, the department will go public with a recruitment seminar inside Second Life — the most popular online metaverse or alternative universe on the web — aimed at attracting the next generation of police candidates from around the globe.

The Vancouver police officers involved in the recruitment on Second Life have their own avatars, or Second Life persona, dressed in a specially designed VPD uniform, badge, belt and radio. They’re also trained in the other-world customs and commands of the virtual society.

The rationale for the sci-fi approach to recruitment is simple, says Insp. Kevin McQuiggin, head of the department’s tech crimes division: If people are on Second Life, they’re likely to be web-savvy, a quality the police department is looking for in new recruits.

Internet and technology-related crimes, from fraud to harassment, are common, McQuiggin says. In fact, he says, almost every major crime involves technology in some way, shape or form.
“It’s important for us, as an organization, to keep abreast of modern technology — both from an educational standpoint and an outreach standpoint, and from an investigative standpoint,” McQuiggin says.

“Any new media that comes out, any new form of communication, crime is going to migrate there.”

(via Game Life)