Education & Technology

NEW YORK Sep 11, 2006 (AP)— Facebook, an online community now restricted mostly to high school and college students, will soon throw its doors wide open and welcome millions of Internet users currently left standing at the gates.

The move will allow existing users to invite their now-ineligible friends, but it also risks changing the tone of a community where trust and privacy are key. Just last week, users revolted when Facebook introduced a feature that allows easier tracking of changes their friends make to personal profile pages.

The change in eligibility will come soon, although Facebook officials were still deciding exactly when.

To join Facebook, a user now must prove membership in an existing network using an e-mail address from a college, a high school or selected companies and organizations. That has largely limited membership to students, along with some faculty and alumni.

As a result, Facebook has fewer than 10 million registered users, compared with some 109 million at News Corp.’s MySpace, which has an open-door policy.

With the change, a user can simply join a regional network such as one for their country, state, metropolitan area or city. No authentication will be performed.

But unlike the case with MySpace and other open community sites, users will be restricted in how much they can learn about others the way Harvard students can’t automatically view a Stanford user’s full profile page, which may include photos, contact information and other personal details.

Users will have to agree to grant access, and they may give some users the ability to view only portions of their profiles.

Started by three Harvard sophomores in February 2004 as an online directory for college campuses, Facebook expanded to high schools last September and to selected companies and organizations earlier this year. Those users have been eligible to join regional networks as well when they graduate or move, and it is those networks that will be expanding soon.

Chris Hughes, co-founder of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company, said everyone around the world will be covered by one of some 500 regional networks, although some regions may cover one or more countries. U.S. regions, he said, are likely to be geographically smaller.

(09-24) 04:00 PDT Washington — New anti-terrorism rules will soon require American children under the age of 16 to obtain U.S. passports to return home by air or sea from visits to Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean.

The children are among the estimated 22 million U.S. travelers to neighboring nations each year who will be required for the first time to present U.S. passports to U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents upon returning to the United States.

The passport requirement — which takes effect Jan. 8 for travelers returning from Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean by air or sea — will affect an estimated 557,000 children, according to the customs agency.

All U.S. citizens returning to the country from Canada and Mexico by road will be required to present passports beginning Jan. 1, 2008.

Passports for adults cost $97 and are good for 10 years. Passports for children younger than 16 cost $82 and are good for five years.

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Vena amoris is a Latin name meaning, literally, “vein of love”. A tradition established a belief that this vein ran directly from the heart to the fourth finger of the left hand. This theory has been cited in western cultures as one of the reasons the engagement ring and/or wedding ring was placed on the fourth finger, or “ring finger”.The earliest use of “jewelry” to signify a bonding was often literally chains and bracelets. This evolved to the use of the symbolic ring. In ancient Egypt, the Sun and the Moon Gods were feared and worshipped. A ring was a symbol of these spirits, both of whom were also related to the home and hearth. The endless circle showed the eternal nature of the bond, while the open center was meant to be a doorway to things unknown.

This tradition was later assimilated by the Greeks, after Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 BC. Up to this time betrothal rings were generally made out of hemp, leather, bone, or ivory. In early Rome the use of metal rings gradually began to take over from these materials, and the metal of choice back then was iron. Gold and silver rings were given on rare occasions, to prove that a man trusted his wife with his valuable property.

The earliest known occurrence of the phrase vena amoris was from Henry Swinburne, whose sole work appears to be the puritanical “A Treatise of Spousal or Matrimonial Contracts” published in 1686. He cites unidentified ancient sources and purports an Egyptian connection; but no earlier mention of the vein can be found. Macrobius, in Saturnalia VII, 13 (a notably fictional work) refers to the connection between the ringfinger and the heart, but implies in the one phrase a nerve rather than a vein, and in another appears to imply more of a magical than physical significant to the choice of finger. The hand is not specified. Of note, the circulatory system was unknown at the time. Another early reference, again not specifying the hand, was by Isidore of Seville in his 7th century work De ecclesiasticis officiis XX, 8, which refers to the Roman story of a vein connected to the heart.

The choice of finger is also less than settled until recent times; during the 17th century in England it was not unusual to wear the wedding ring on the thumb. Gauls and Britons wore their rings on the middle finger, and the choice of right or left hand appears relatively dependent on culture; though cultures that use either the right or left ring finger both claim a historical connection to the vena amoris. The use of wedding and betrothal rings was not commonplace in the Roman Empire until the 2nd cetury; which also contradicts versions of the story which claim that this tradition was brought to Rome in the 3rd century BCE.

The strong possibility exists, based on the lack of concrete sources, that this story is a combination of ancient beliefs in the mystical properties of the ring finger, smatterings of legend, and shrewd marketing by the jewellery industry, which has in the past not demonstrated a willingness to exploit myths and legends to increase ring sales.

Well It looks like Apple finally released the new version of ITunes7. It will feature full length movie downloads, starting with Pixar and Disney titles. I think Apple is doing good job on the progress since the last time they introduced television showtime downloads in addition to the music store. One of other key elements of the presentation was the littile ITv box that will wirelessly send and broadcast the signal from your computer to your TV. I have to get my hands on one of these bad boys as soon as it’s available. Of course there were many more improvements and additions on Apple’s horizon but I just wanted to mention those two. Check the http://www.macrumors.com and http://www.apple.com for more information.