JoeKuboj writes "Texas Rep. Ron Paul announced Thursday he is suspending his bid for the Republican presidential nomination to focus his time on building an organization to help recruit and elect 'limited government Republicans.' Paul's decision to leave the race is an acknowledgment he had no chance of winning the GOP nomination. But even in loss, Paul is one of a handful of candidates who walked away from this presidential contest a winner. His presidential campaign had a broad base of support that included traditionally fiscal and socially conservative Republicans to young people who were angry about the U.S. decision to wage war against Iraq."

BenderFan writes "The first review of the next Futurama DVD, The Beast With a Billion Backs (out in the US on June 24), has appeared online. And the reviewer liked it — a lot." (I hope it's as good as Bender's Big Score.) Read on for reader submissions on two other upcoming movies. The Day The Earth Stood Still (with Keanu Reeves, but also John Cleese) is due out in December, and a movie version of Philip K. Dick's The Owl in Daylight is currently being drafted by Tony Grisoni; the interview linked below is appropriately surreal.

modernphysics writes "The Outreach Department at Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics offers a wide array of online lecture playbacks examining hot topics in modern physics and beyond. Presentations include Neil Turok's 'What Banged?,' John Ellis with 'The Large Hadron Collider,' Nima Arkani-Hamed with 'Fundamental Physics in 2010,' Paul Steinhardt with 'Impossible Crystals,' Edward Witten with 'The Quest for Supersymmetry,' Seth Lloyd with 'Programming the Universe,' Anton Zeilinger with 'From Einstein to Quantum Information,' Raymond Laflamme with 'Harnessing the Quantum World,' and many other talks. The presentations feature a split-screen presentation with the guest speaker in one frame and their full-frame graphics in the other."

Aeonite writes "As we all learned in English class, there are three points of view one can employ when writing: first person ("I learned"), second person ("You learned"), and third person ("He learned"). You are about to read a review of Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media, a book that addresses the use of second-person narration in games and related media. You are also likely to be eaten by a Grue." Read below for the rest of Michael's review.

Pickens writes "Dr. Dobbs has an interesting interview with Paul Jansen, the managing director of TIOBE Software, about the Programming Community Index, which measures the popularity of programming languages by monitoring their web presence. Since the TIOBE index has been published now for more than 6 years, it gives an interesting picture about trends in the usage of programming languages. Jansen says not much has affected the top ten programming languages in the last five years, with only Python entering the top 10 (replacing COBOL), but C and C++ are definitely losing ground. 'Languages without automated garbage collection are getting out of fashion,' says Jansen. 'The chance of running into all kinds of memory problems is gradually outweighing the performance penalty you have to pay for garbage collection.'"

ahess247 brings us a lengthy BusinessWeek story on the increasing amount of attacks against the US government's online presence as well as its contacts in the private sector. Hackers are gaining a greater awareness of where valuable data might reside, and that awareness is leading to more precise, more sophisticated attacks. Quoting: "The U.S. government, and its sprawl of defense contractors, have been the victims of an unprecedented rash of similar cyber attacks over the last two years, say current and former U.S. government officials. 'It's espionage on a massive scale,' says Paul B. Kurtz, a former high-ranking national security official. Government agencies reported 12,986 cyber security incidents to the U.S. Homeland Security Dept. last fiscal year, triple the number from two years earlier. Incursions on the military's networks were up 55% last year, says Lieutenant General Charles E. Croom, head of the Pentagon's Joint Task Force for Global Network Operations. Private targets like Booz Allen are just as vulnerable and pose just as much potential security risk. 'They have our information on their networks. They're building our weapon systems. You wouldn't want that in enemy hands,' Croom says. Cyber attackers 'are not denying, disrupting, or destroying operations--yet. But that doesn't mean they don't have the capability.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Google is giving a handful of web programmers the opportunity to create and run their own Web applications on their servers. Today's launch of a preview release of Google App Engine signals a new era of collaboration with third-party software developers. 'The goal is to make it easy to get started with a new Web app, and then make it easy to scale when that app reaches the point where it's receiving significant traffic and has millions of users," said Google product manager, Paul McDonald in a blog post."

An anonymous reader notes that Comcast is offering a new 50-Mbps / 6-Mbps package for residential customers for $150, starting in Minneapolis-St. Paul and extending nationwide by mid-2010. The new service will use the DOCSIS 3.0 standard, which is nearing ratification. We've recently discussed Comcast's BitTorrent throttling and promise to quit it, and their low-quality 'HD' programming. How attractive will $150 for 50 Mbps be compared to Verizon's FiOS offerings?

Wow. More politicians (of all parties) need to be as open and thorough as Steve Novick is here. We selected 10 of the questions you submitted and sent them to him by email, and his responses... let's just say that if every candidate spoke out like Steve, we'd have a much clearer view of our choices and would be able to cast our votes a lot more rationally.

antipeon alerts us to a presidential preference survey, done in late February and early March, indicating that Obama and McCain lead among IT workers with 29% each. Clinton follows with 13%, just ahead of Huckabee (11%) and Ron Paul (9%). The Computing Technology Industry Association commissioned the poll, and the article notes that this trade group claims the population of IT workers is four times as large as the Bureau of Labor Statistics thinks it is — the better to make a voting block whose views must be attended to.

Paul Burrell (born June 6 , 1958 ( 1958-06-06 ) (age 49) , at Grassmoor (near Chesterfield , Derbyshire ) is a former member of the Royal Household . He was a footman for Queen ...

Official Site of Paul Burrell Former Royal Butler to Diana, Princess of Wales, noted authority on all things regal...

Princess Diana's butler, Paul Burrell, has been cleared of stealing from her estate. Here is a timeline of the investigation and controversial trial.

UPDATED!http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/2402_burrell_a.shtmlPaul Burrell dishes out advice on dignity

EXPLOSIVE confession, PAUL BURRELL LIED at the inquest. WHY did he feel the need to do it and WHERE does this leave the inquiry?

Sky News - Claims that former royal butler Paul Burrell admitted not telling the truth at the inquest into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, are being investigated. ...

Sky News - Claims that former royal butler Paul Burrell admitted not telling the truth at the inquest into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, are being investigated. ...

Paul Burrell, the former butler for Diana, Princess of Wales, has allegedly admitted that he did not tell the “whole truth” at her inquest.

Paul Burrell. Paul is married to Maria, and the couple live in Cheshire. They have two sons, Alexander and Nicholas.

Amazon.com: A Royal Duty: Paul Burrell,Patrick Demarchelier: Books ... Book Description Diana, the Princess of Wales, was one of the most publicly covered figures in the modern ...

Paul Burrell (born June 6 , 1958 ( 1958-06-06 ) (age 49) , at Grassmoor (near Chesterfield , Derbyshire ) is a former member of the Royal Household . He was a footman for Queen ...

Official Site of Paul Burrell Former Royal Butler to Diana, Princess of Wales, noted authority on all things regal...

Princess Diana's butler, Paul Burrell, has been cleared of stealing from her estate. Here is a timeline of the investigation and controversial trial.

UPDATED!http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/2402_burrell_a.shtmlPaul Burrell dishes out advice on dignity

EXPLOSIVE confession, PAUL BURRELL LIED at the inquest. WHY did he feel the need to do it and WHERE does this leave the inquiry?

Sky News - Claims that former royal butler Paul Burrell admitted not telling the truth at the inquest into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, are being investigated. ...

Sky News - Claims that former royal butler Paul Burrell admitted not telling the truth at the inquest into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, are being investigated. ...

Paul Burrell, the former butler for Diana, Princess of Wales, has allegedly admitted that he did not tell the “whole truth” at her inquest.

Paul Burrell. Paul is married to Maria, and the couple live in Cheshire. They have two sons, Alexander and Nicholas.

Amazon.com: A Royal Duty: Paul Burrell,Patrick Demarchelier: Books ... Book Description Diana, the Princess of Wales, was one of the most publicly covered figures in the modern ...