“Google, which went public in mid-August and runs a very profitable advertising business, has been hit with several intellectual property lawsuits from advertisers seeking to protect their trademarks.” Says this news.com piece. This time it’s from nude photo provider, Perfect 10. “They’re showing the pictures from my magazine and my Web site for free so there’s no reason for anyone to buy my products. To add insult to injury, they give away my user names and passwords,” said Norm Zada, president of Beverly Hills, Calif.-based Perfect 10.

Further, a Google Web search for “perfect10.com passwords” serves up a list of usernames and passwords that would enable searchers to access Perfect 10’s Web site and bypass its $25.50 monthly membership fee. Or so the claim goes. Sounds awfully steep for a membership to look at nudie pix on the Internet but it’s probably better than looking at Geico’s pet Gekko.

LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles Police Department is experimenting with facial-recognition software it says will help identify suspects, but civil liberties advocates say the technology raises privacy concerns and may not identity people accurately. “It’s like a mobile electronic mug book,” said Capt. Charles Beck of the gang-heavy Rampart Division, which has been using the software. “It’s not a silver bullet, but we wouldn’t use it unless it helped us make arrests.”

Historical question of note: Rampart Station was the home to what TV police show?

“Using a computer doing 360 trillion calculations a second, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Lab will simulate the explosion of an ageing nuclear bomb in three dimensions. <>In a room about half the size of a football field, BlueGene/L is a series of interconnected six-foot (1.8 meters)- high racks holding 16 modules, each packed with massive computing power. The first part of BlueGene, built by IBM, became operational in mid-December at 90 trillion calculations a second; the rest should be ready by April. Even at its ultimate 360 trillion calculations a second speed, the simulation will take two to four months, lab officials say. This same calculation would have taken 60,000 years if done on technology available a decade ago.”

Want to know why? Here’s the rest of the story…

Over at Gizmag (you know, Gizmo with a name change…), they’re talking about a new Israeli product that can detect truth and lies, as well as strong emotion –and it looks like a pair of glasses. “The company is already showing a pair of glasses (see? what did I just say?) with internal LED lights which will run a real-time analysis of conversations of thee wearer reporting on the veracity of the person the wearer is speaking to with a claimed accuracy of better than 95%. The Israeli-developed technology is being licensed in America through a company with a single letter name: V.”

“V”…? Wasn’t that a TV series about alien reptiles who disguised themselves as human and then tried to take over the world?

(You guys have made this a wonderful year. Thanks! In 2005 we’ll try for prosperous.) ;-)

Sorry to mention this during the holiday season but Chicken Little might have been right. The sky could be falling…. or at least a chunk of it. “There’s a 1-in-300 chance that a recently discovered asteroid, believed to be about 1,300 feet long, could hit Earth on Friday, April 13, 2029, a NASA scientist said Thursday, but he added that the perceived risk probably will be eliminated once astronomers get more detail about its orbit.”

Here’s where it gets funny. The scientists involved are telling everyone not worry about, but, if it did happen to hit the ocen (which is likely) there’s be tsnumai or, if it hit the land, there’d be significant ground damage. Friday the 13th - Jason Gets a Slingshot….

CHRISTMAS UPDATE: As of Christmas Day, we’re down to a 1 in 45 chance of ending up with a ‘roid in our asters…..

A team of international scientists has found new fish and insect species, including a monster cockroach, living in caves in Indonesia’s remote East Kalimantan province, the group announced Wednesday.

For those of you in New York City, be thankful for what you have.