| 2007 Subaru WRX TR Sedan Review
The Subaru WRX, the original rally car for the road, got the first major changes of its American-market career, for the 2006 model year. If the new-look nose restyling was the most apparent change, the most significant revisions were under the aluminum hood. The original 2.0-liter turbocharged and intercooled boxer four was replaced by the detuned version of the 2.5-liter STi engine used in the Forester XT. With 230 horsepower it would seem little different from the 2.0-liter engine's 227, but there was a significant increase in torque, from 217 to 235 lb-ft. To complement the improved power output, plus-one tires, 17- instead of 16-inch, wider and lower in profile, were fitted, and suspension, brake and airbag systems were upgraded. And the WRX lineup grew, with the introduction of two additional trim levels, the TR, for the sedan body style only, and the Limited for both the sedan and wagon.
Exploring Turkishness
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is given yearly to an American fiction writer. The 2006 award went to an author who spent quite a bit of time as a journalist in the Middle East, based in Cairo. Geraldine Brooks wrote Nine Parts of Desire, a book of non-fiction, which tells the stories of women around the Middle East and Foreign Correspondence detailing her experiences searching for her childhood pen pals around the world. A versatile writer, Brooks has since switched her focus from journalism to historically based fiction. She was awarded the Pulitzer for her novel March, which is set in the Civil War-era United States. March is about an army chaplain, whose character is based on the absent father in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. After leaving his family to do what he feels will be the right thing, fighting the good fight against the Confederacy, the idealistic character March becomes severely shaken and the moral dilemmas he faces begin to affect his ideals and his marriage.
IT U.S. Antitrust Court Slams Microsoft With Two More Years of ...
Despite the circus-like atmosphere punctuated with laugh-inducing testimony, United States v. Microsoft, which went to trial in 1998, remains one of the landmark federal court decisions of the 90's. It paved the way for other government bodies worldwide, such as the European Union, to successfully pursue antitrust cases against Microsoft and other electronics giants like Intel. Microsoft and the government reached a settlement in which Microsoft agreed to grant third-party developers access to its application-programming-interface and additionally give a court appointed panel of three people full access to it's systems, records, and source code for five years in order to ensure compliance. The oversight was supposed to expire November 12, 2007, but the court was not entirely satisfied with Microsoft's progress, so it decided to meet again to evaluate a possible extension to oversight if Microsoft was found not to be fully complying.
Startup plans floating data centres
A STARTUP is planning to build floating data centres on knackered cargo ships. San Francisco Bay Area company International Data Security (IDS) envisions it will have up to 50 decommissioned container ships housing data server farms, moored in various ports around the world including 22 in North American cities. IDS believes using cargo ships will give it flexibility and enable expansion limited only by the availability of ships and port space instead of real estate constraints. Its first location will be available at Pier 50 in San Francisco starting in April and it already has, ahem, anchor tenants signed, a source close to the company said. Shipboard cargo spaces will be built out as data center floors and deck space will be used to stack modular data centers in standard shipping containers.
Freezing weather a hot time for furnace repairmen
Chances are it's coming from your poor overworked furnace in the utility room. Or it could be a loud sigh from the heating people in the Fox Valley -- who, after getting reacquainted with their families these last couple of moderate-temp days, must now go back into battle as winter returns with a vengeance. Fact is, we got spoiled. The past few winters have been unusually mild, which makes the current arctic blast like a, well, arctic blast of reality. Aurora, in particular, has sustained a string of sub-zero temperatures, including the day we hit 17 below and officially became the coldest place in the country. And no one is feeling the frigid effects more than businesses trying to keep up with the calls from us unfortunate schmucks who have awakened -- or arrived home from work -- to igloo-like conditions because the furnace is on the fritz.
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