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Re “Politics of Attack” (editorial, Oct. 8) and “Obama and ’60s Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths” (front page, Oct. 4):

As the lead federal prosecutor of the Weathermen in the 1970s (I was then chief of the criminal division in the Eastern District of Michigan and took over the Weathermen prosecution in 1972), I am amazed and outraged that Senator Barack Obama is being linked to William Ayers’s terrorist activities 40 years ago when Mr. Obama was, as he has noted, just a child.

Although I dearly wanted to obtain convictions against all the Weathermen, including Bill Ayers, I am very pleased to learn that he has become a responsible citizen.

Because Senator Obama recently served on a board of a charitable organization with Mr. Ayers cannot possibly link the senator to acts perpetrated by Mr. Ayers so many years ago.

I do take issue with the statement in your news article that the Weathermen indictment was dismissed because of “prosecutorial misconduct.” It was dismissed because of illegal activities, including wiretaps, break-ins and mail interceptions, initiated by John N. Mitchell, attorney general at that time, and W. Mark Felt, an F.B.I. assistant director.

William C. Ibershof

Mill Valley, Calif., Oct. 8, 2008

Scuttle

By the end of 2007, prices had fallen 10% from the peak, and 8.2 million homeowners owed more on their mortgages than their homes were worth.

As of Q2 2008, prices had fallen almost 18% from the peak, and for the graph, I estimated that prices will decline about 22.5% from the peak by the end of 2008. (this seems conservative). This means about 15.4 million households will be underwater or already foreclosed on by the end of 2008.

The last two categories are based on various estimates for the price bottom (peak-to-trough). The 30% decline was suggested by Paul Krugman in December 2007: What it takes). The 35% decline is close to the "severe recession" case presented by JPMorgan last week.

Not every homeowner with negative equity will default, in fact many of these homeowners will only be underwater by a few percent. But if we estimate one half of homeowners with negative equity will eventually default, use a 50% loss severity, and a 35% price decline (23.6 million households with negative equity), and use the median house price from the Census Bureau of $216 thousand, we get $1.3 trillion in mortgage losses for lenders.

I think this is probably high (probably fewer than 50% will default), but this does give a general idea of the potential losses. If we use one third of homeowners, the mortgage losses with a 35% peak-to-trough price decline would be about $840 billion.
Posted by CalculatedRisk at 7:09 PM Comments (244)
Labels: House Prices, Negative

Problems with WEP encryption

Setting up WEP encryption properly can be tricky, as the settings on the card and base station must match exactly. Here are some of the things that often go wrong:

Mismatched authentication methods -- WEP defines two authentication methods: "open system" and "shared secret." To establish a connection, the card and base station have to agree on which one to use. Normally, both are set to "auto" and everything works. But some base stations disable "open system" while certain cards (especially with older firmware) don't understand "shared secret." Thus, no communication. In these cases, the solution is to enable "open system" on the base station or update the card's firmware.

Mismatched keys -- WEP keys can be long and difficult to type in correctly. This is one reason we don't obscure the characters while you're typing in a new key. We also support all of the various key formats that different base station vendors use. Make sure you've selected the right type of key, and that the key value is typed in exactly as it is for the base station.

For AirPort passwords and ASCII keys, capitalization and spacing must match. For hex keys, all of the hex digits must be present. For all keys, the length of the key must also match. WEP keys come in two lengths: 40-bit and 104-bit, usually described on the packaging as 64-bit and 128-bit. And here's a handy guide to key lengths and corresponding encryption settings:

5 characters --> 64-bit ASCII password
10 characters --> 64-bit WEP key
13 characters --> 128-bit ASCII password
26 characters --> 128-bit WEP key

Multiple keys -- Most base stations are configured with a single encryption key, but some are set up to use multiple keys at the same time. If you are using one of these, you need to enter all four keys in the same order as they have been entered on the base station and select which key your card should use when it transmits network data.

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Do you support 40-bi

UPDATE March 15, 2007
The University of Alberta Discovery

DCA is an odourless, colourless, inexpensive, relatively non-toxic, small molecule. And researchers at the University of Alberta believe it may soon be used as an effective treatment for many forms of cancer.

Dr. Evangelos Michelakis, a professor at the U of A Department of Medicine, has shown that dichloroacetate (DCA) causes regression in several cancers, including lung, breast, and brain tumors.

Michelakis and his colleagues, including post-doctoral fellow Dr. Sebastien Bonnet, have published the results of their research in the journal Cancer Cell.

Scientists and doctors have used DCA for decades to treat children with inborn errors of metabolism due to mitochondrial diseases. Mitochondria, the energy producing units in cells, have been connected with cancer since the 1930s, when researchers first noticed that these organelles dysfunction when cancer is present.

Until recently, researchers believed that cancer-affected mitochondria are permanently damaged and that this damage is the result, not the cause, of the cancer. But Michelakis, a cardiologist, questioned this belief and began testing DCA, which activates a critical mitochondrial enzyme, as a way to "revive" cancer-affected mitochondria.

The results astounded him.

Michelakis and his colleagues found that DCA normalized the mitochondrial function in many cancers, showing that their function was actively suppressed by the cancer but was not permanently damaged by it.

More importantly, they found that the normalization of mitochondrial function resulted in a significant decrease in tumor growth both in test tubes and in animal models. Also, they noted that DCA, unlike most currently used chemotherapies, did not have any effects on normal, non-cancerous tissues.

"I think DCA can be selective for cancer because it attacks a fundamental process in cancer development that is unique to cancer cells," Michelakis said. "One of th