With Release Candidate 1 expected in the near future, Microsoft quietly produced another interim release. Microsoft continues to focus on polish and overall improvement in compatibility, stability, and performance in Build 5536.

This weekend, Microsoft quietly produced a new interim release of Windows Vista, build 5536, which is available to select beta testers. Build 5536 is the first release we've seen that's officially on the RC1—Release Candidate 1—branch of the Vista code base. With RC1 itself expected in the near future, we haven't tested build 5536 aggressively, since the actual RC1 code will provide the best indication of how close Vista is to being truly ready for the marketplace. But, of course, I did install build 5536 to get a sense of the progress Microsoft has made since build 5472, the last release I covered in depth.

So far, build 5536 has behaved fairly well and seems to run snappily. Aside from my inability to install some applications, the biggest problem I've encountered in this release is that resuming from sleep has been unreliable and extremely slow. Putting a computer to sleep only takes a few seconds, but resuming has taken as long as 2 minutes.

At this point, overtly apparent changes in Vista from release to release are relatively minimal. Microsoft is applying cosmetic polish and working on improving compatibility, stability, and performance. In particular, I'm finding networking capabilities in build 5536 behave much more like I'd expect—machines connected both by Ethernet and Wi-Fi are able to locate nearby machines and share files without hassles. Connecting to shared printers finally seems to work the way it should, too.


Windows Media Player 11, which seemed plagued by instability in the previous build I tested, has so far worked reliably. I'm happy to see that Vista's application-specific volume controls also seem to be shaping up.

Build 5536 includes a link to a Program Compatibility Wizard on the desktop. When Vista thinks an application didn't install successfully, it offers to retry the installation in a compatibility mode that lets you emulate earlier versions of Windows. Even after running the compatibility wizard, though, I wasn't able to successfully install one of the programming tools I rely on, ActiveState Perl.

The User Account Control feature that's a key aspect of Vista's security strategy seems like it's getting less intrusive—either that, or I'm getting more used to it. But in my conversations with Microsoft since Beta 2, the company has convincingly demonstrated how it uses the instrumentation built into Vista to determine which use cases most often generate dialogs and then work to mitigate those, so I'm not surprised that the experience is improving.

Evidence of Microsoft's continued efforts to fine-tune Vista's interface are also apparent in build 5536. The Flip 3-D view that shows you open applications in perspective when you press Windows-Tab has eliminated the jaggy edges that detracted from previous implementations.

Mesothelioma is a form of cancer that is almost always caused by previous exposure to asbestos. In this disease, malignant cells develop in the mesothelium, a protective lining that covers most of the body's internal organs. Its most common site is the pleura (outer lining of the lungs and chest cavity), but it may also occur in the peritoneum (the lining of the abdominal cavity) or the pericardium (a sac that surrounds the heart).

Most people who develop mesothelioma have worked on jobs where they inhaled asbestos particles, or have been exposed to asbestos dust and fibre in other ways, such as by washing the clothes of a family member who worked with asbestos, or by home renovation using asbestos cement products. There is no association between mesothelioma and smoking.

Sign and Symptoms

Symptoms of mesothelioma may not appear until 20 to 50 years after exposure to asbestos. Shortness of breath, cough, and pain in the chest due to an accumulation of fluid in the pleural space are often symptoms of pleural mesothelioma.

Symptoms of peritoneal mesothelioma include weight loss and cachexia, abdominal swelling and pain due to ascites (a buildup of fluid in the abdominal cavity). Other symptoms of peritoneal mesothelioma may include bowel obstruction, blood clotting abnormalities, anemia, and fever. If the cancer has spread beyond the mesothelium to other parts of the body, symptoms may include pain, trouble swallowing, or swelling of the neck or face.

These symptoms may be caused by mesothelioma or by other, less serious conditions.

Mesothelioma that affects the pleura can cause these signs and symptoms:

• chest wall pain
• pleural effusion, or fluid surrounding the lung
• shortness of breath
  wheezing, hoarseness, or cough
  

In severe cases, the person may have many tumor masses. The individual may develop a pneumothorax, or collapse of the lung. The disease may metastasize, or spread, to other parts of the body.

Tumors that affect the abdominal cavity often do not cause symptoms until they are at a late stage. Symptoms include:

• abdominal pain
  
• ascites, or an abnormal buildup of fluid in the abdomen
  
• a mass in the abdomen
  
• problems with bowel function
  
• weight loss
  

In severe cases of the disease, the following signs and symptoms may be present:

• blood clots in the veins, which may cause thrombophlebitis
  
• disseminated intravascular coagulation, a disorder causing severe bleeding in many body organs
  
• jaundice, or yellowing of the eyes and skin
  
• low blood sugar level
  
• pleural effusion
  
• pulmonary emboli, or blood clots in the arteries of the lungs
  
• severe ascites
  

A mesothelioma does not usually spread to the bone, brain, or adrenal glands. Pleural tumors are usually found only on one side of the lungs.

Diagnosis

Diagnosing mesothelioma is often difficult, because the symptoms are similar to those of a number of other conditions. Diagnosis begins with a review of the patient's medical history. A history of exposure to asbestos may increase clinical suspicion for mesothelioma. A physical examination is performed, followed by chest X-ray and often lung function tests. The X-ray may reveal pleural thickening commonly seen after asbestos exposure and increases suspicion of mesothelioma. A CT (or CAT) scan or an MRI is usually performed. If a large amount of fluid is present, abnormal cells may be detected by cytology if this fluid is aspirated with a syringe. For pleural fluid this is done by a pleural tap or chest drain, in ascites with an paracentesis or ascitic drain and in a pericardial effusion with pericardiocentesis. While absence of malignant cells on cytology does not completely exclude mesothelioma, it makes it much more unlikely, especially if an alternative diagnosis can be made (e.g. tuberculosis, heart failure).

If cytology is positive or a plaque is regarded as suspicious, a biopsy is needed to confirm a diagnosis of mesothelioma. A doctor removes a sample of tissue for examination under a microscope by a histopathologist. A biopsy may be done in different ways, depending on where the abnormal area is located. If the cancer is in the chest, the doctor may perform a thoracoscopy. In this procedure, the doctor makes a small cut through the chest wall and puts a thin, lighted tube called a thoracoscope into the chest between two ribs. Thoracoscopy allows the doctor to look inside the chest and obtain tissue samples.

If the cancer is in the abdomen, the doctor may perform a laparoscopy. To obtain tissue for examination, the doctor makes a small opening in the abdomen and inserts a special instrument into the abdominal cavity. If these procedures do not yield enough tissue, more extensive diagnostic surgery may be necessary.

laser was performed experimentally for about 20 years before it became commercially available in the mid 1990s. Laser and light-based methods are sometimes called phototricholysis or photoepilation.

In addition to lasers, some light-based epilators use a xenon flash lamp which emits full-spectrum intense pulsed light (IPL) . Treatment with this device is sometimes popularly referred to as laser hair removal, though the device is not a laser per se.

Mechanism of action

The primary principle behind laser hair removal is selective photothermolysis. Lasers can cause localized damage by selectively heating dark target matter in the area that causes hair growth while not heating the rest of the skin. Light is absorbed by dark objects, so laser energy can be absorbed by dark material in the skin (but with much more speed and intensity). This dark target matter, or chromophore, can be naturally-occurring or artificially introduced.

Hair removal lasers selectively target one of three chromophores:

• Carbon, which is introduced into the hair follicle by rubbing a carbon-based lotion into the skin following waxing (this lotion is an "exogenous chromophore"). When irradiated by a Q-switched Nd:YAG laser, the carbon causes a shock wave capable of mechanically damaging nearby cells. This method has been abandoned since it does not cause permanent loss. (It has been replaced with the long-pulsed Nd:YAG laser which targets endogenous melanin in the follicle.)
  
• Hemoglobin, which occurs naturally in blood (it gives blood its red color). It preferentially absorbs wavelengths from argons, and to a lesser extent from rubies, alexandrites, and diodes. It minimally absorbs the Nd:YAG laser wavelength. Hemoglobin is not a primary target for laser hair removal.
  
• Melanin is considered the primary chromophore for all hair removal lasers currently on the market. Melanin occurs naturally in the skin (it gives skin and hair its color). There are two types of melanin in hair: eumelanin (which gives hair brown or black color) and pheomelanin (which gives hair blonde or red color). Because of the selective absorption of photons of laser light, only black or brown hair can be removed.
  

Any laser light beam intended for topical use can only penetrate skin tissue two millimeters deep. As such, there has been great controversy surrounding the laser industry claims to what most people think of when they hear the word "permanent".

The dermal papilla is the only appropriate target of destruction, as it is the only substructure of the hair shaft which can reproduce a new root system, and therefore a new hair shaft. The dermal papilla is located at a depth of 7-8 millimeters for coarse hair, and so is beyond the reach of laser.

For a short list of approved lasers, the Food and Drug Administration permits the use of the phrase "permanent reduction." The use of the phrase "permanent removal" is not permitted for any laser whatsoever. Clinics performing laser hair removal usually recommend at least six treatments. For this reason treatments are often sold in packages.

Laser hair removal costs

The costs of laser hair removal vary by region. The US average price for laser treatments is $429.00 according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.

 

The number of e-gold accounts (as claimed by e-gold) grew from 1 million in November 2003 to 3 million on 22 April 2006. That represents a compound growth rate of approximately 55% per annum. This high growth rate has been sustained by e-gold almost since inception.

Role in global commerce

Many small businesses in the U.S., Europe and Asia, each with full-time staff now operate as "digital gold currency exchange providers," doing nothing other than buying and selling digital gold currency for "fiat currencies," as gold bugs term the euro, pound, yen and U.S. dollar.

e-gold transactions — a "spend" — are completed electronically, usually using the web interface, and they always settle by weight of the metal even if denominated in some other way. A user may send (or "spend") a tiny amount of gold (a fraction of a gram, ounce or kilogram) to another user account instantly, anywhere in the world.

Even though e-gold is careful to not advocate any particular political agenda, as the Liberty Dollar does for example, e-gold could be viewed as a libertarian form of private currency.

Features

Unlike fractional-reserve banking, e-gold holds 100% of clients' funds in reserves with a store of value. Proponents of the e-gold system contend that e-gold deposits are protected against inflation, devaluation and other possible economic risks inherent in fiat currencies. These risks include the monetary policy of countries or territories, which are perceived by proponents to be harmful to the value of paper currency.

The repository of the actual bullion bars with serial numbers and other data can be seen using the live "Examiner" function on the e-gold web site. Bullion is held in allocated storage with Brink's Global Services (part of The Brink's Company), Transguard Security Services (part of The Emirates Group) or MAT Securitas Express AG (part of the VIA MAT Group). Clients hold an unallocated share of this allocated bullion.

The user may take physical delivery of the precious metal upon payment of an additional fee, and provided the user has an available balance of at least the weight of the smallest individual item displayed in the Examiner. This is currently a 32 troy ounce gold bar, which is worth approximately $20,000. However in practice, most users permit the company to store the metal for them.

Bullion investing

e-gold is a form of commodity money, so it is subject to the price fluctuations of that commodity. If the price of gold drops versus your national currency, the value of your e-gold drops in that currency. The account balance, which is denominated in gold grams, does not change, but its purchasing power will change in relation to the gold price.

This can, of course, work both ways. Proponents of the e-gold system would argue that the risk of significant price fluctuation is small compared to the risk of value fluctuations among fiat currencies. The opposite argument is that a typical user is more affected by changes in the price of e-gold than of fiat currencies; this is because most people are paid in and spend their local currency, while the use of e-gold will typically involve a foreign exchange transaction each time. In both cases, long-term shifts in the price of a currency or e-gold affect its owner, but anyone who frequently buys and sells e-gold will be exposed to short-term fluctuations as well. The price of gold has happened to increase over the past five years, so this factor has worked out to the advantage of anyone holding e-gold over that period.

As well as digital gold, e-gold also offers e-silver, e-palladium and e-platinum. Funds can be switched between e-metals using their sister company OmniPay. Metal-to-metal (or "M2M") exchanges are completed at spot price with no bid/offer spread. e-metal provides an easy way to gain access to bullion investing, without the hassles of delivery and storage.

Exchanging fiat currency

e-gold does not sell its currency directly to clients. Instead numerous digital gold currency exchangers, such as OmniPay (a sister company of e-gold), act as market makers selling e-metal in exchange for fiat currency and a transaction fee. Conversely, these exchange providers will sell fiat currency in exchange for e-metal, and a transaction fee. In this manner e-metals can be converted back and forth to a variety of national currencies. The amount of a particular fiat currency or e-metal necessary to complete a transaction is determined by the spot price of the metal in relation to the value of the fiat currency. e-gold is known as private currency as it is not issued by governments.

Compared to other systems like PayPal, the process of buying e-gold can be confusing to a person unfamiliar with the e-gold system. e-gold, unlike e-Bullion for instance, does not sell digital currency directly to the user. According to their website the reason e-gold does not provide an in-house exchange service is so there can be no debt or contingent liabilities associated with the business, making e-gold Ltd. absolutely free of any financial risk. They claim e-gold Ltd. does not possess currency of any nation or even have a bank account.

Fees

e-gold charge an account fee (or Agio Fee) of 1% per annum (deducted in monthly payments) on all e-metal stored.

Spending e-gold is free, with transaction fees (or Spend Fees) deducted from the recipient. As of 2006 these spend fees vary on a sliding scale from 55% for very small amounts (0.0004 grams of gold, worth about 1 cent) to 5% for amounts on the order of 0.1 gram (about $2) to 1% for amounts of over 1 gram (about $20), with a maximum fee of .05 grams (about $1).

e-gold spends clear instantly, in contrast to cheques or credit card transactions. Unlike other online payment systems such as PayPal, there are no distinctions between merchant and non-merchant e-gold accounts. Anyone can instantly create a "merchant account" (there is only one type of account). All e-gold accounts carry the same fees and have the same capacity to receive and transmit e-gold account holdings.

Non-reversible transactions

Unlike credit cards, there is no way of having transactions reversed, even in case of a legitimate error or an unauthorized spend. e-gold's Terms of Use stipulate that all spends are final and e-gold cannot be held responsible for any spend. In this respect, an e-gold spend is more akin to a cash transaction (except for the fact that there is a fee levied) while PayPal transfers, for example, could be considered more similar to credit card transactions.

Universal currency

Proponents claim that e-gold offers the first truly global and borderless world currency system which is independent of exchange rate variations. Gold, silver, platinum and palladium each have recognised international currency codes under ISO 4217.

Incentive program

e-gold clients can place a referral link on a website to generate a few cents in referral income. If a new client sets up an e-gold account from someone else's referral link, it is harmless and does not cost the new client any money when performing future e-gold transactions.

Criticisms

Security

As with any online payment system, e-gold is vulnerable to various threats, notably phishing (for example, forged emails asking for login details) and spyware (such as keystroke logging).

In the early years of e-gold, this problem was widely reported to be rampant. The problem could have been due to the novelty of the system, combined with the irreversibility of payments, combined with the hardness of gold as money, combined with many of the early users being "gold bugs" rather than technically-oriented computer users.

Fortunately around early 2004, this problem seemed to be largely eliminated at a stroke, by e-gold adding a simple IP checking process for spends. (This has often been cited as a good example of how extremely simple solutions to security problems can often have big results.)

Some competing DGCs offer similar features to combat typical, simple, "mass" phishing attacks. e-Bullion utilizes a "two-factor", token-based authentication solution from CRYPTOCard, an alternative to RSA's "SecureID". Pecunix has an extremely secure, somewhat complicated, log-in procedure. 1mdc has a simple PIN-pad addition. GoldMoney allows user certificates to be used. Most systems include an optional "email confirmation" type of process. All of these approaches thwart simple keystroke loggers.

In 2005, the Los Angeles Times reported on a specially created trojan horse that compromised "dozens" to "the low hundreds" of e-gold accounts. While trojans usually silently record the login details of the unsuspecting user, the trojan in question (Win32.Grams) emptied the accounts themselves by transferring the contents to the attacker's accounts.

Regulatory challenges

e-gold Ltd. was registered in Nevis, West Indies in 1999, but was removed from the register in 2003. It is not a registered entity in Nevis as of at least March 31, 2006.

In September 2004 several Australian e-gold currency exchanges ceased operation due to stricter application of Financial Services Licencing regulations. Digital gold currency exchangers that were closed down by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) include:

• goldex
• sydneygoldsales
• ozzigold

Whilst exchange providers can still operate in Australia many have found it impractical to do so due to proxy issues. Australian residents can exchange e-gold via exchangers in the U.S., Europe or other countries. There appears to be no issues about NZ citizens buying e-gold in NZ, and a number of AU citizens have opened NZ bank accounts, specifically to purchase e-gold from NZ based exchangers. (Although e-gold doesn't denominate e-gold in NZD)

Bullion storage

As of November 2005, it is unclear if e-gold has an independent auditor of the physical bars, so there is no way of knowing if e-gold Ltd. really has the reserves to back the currency in the e-gold system. e-gold does maintain an "Examiner", a web page with updated statistics on outstanding liabilities and the total amount of each precious metal in its holding. While proponents generally consider this assuring enough, some critics remain skeptical.

Limited use

Beginning January 2006, eBay has restricted buyers and sellers from using any online payment system except for PayPal. eBay specifically named e-gold as one of the online payment systems that will result in them cancelling a seller's account if used. e-gold runs a non-reversible transaction policy, meaning that there is no protection for purchasers if vendors fail to supply goods.

Crime and fraud

e-gold has notoriously been the medium of choice for many online con-artists, with pyramid schemes and HYIPs ("High Yield Investment Programs") commonplace. This is presumably partly due to e-gold maintaining its policy of irreversibility of e-gold transactions. According to a website who maintains a comprehensive database of HYIP scams daily, 89% of the scams preferred e-gold as their online payment processors than others.

e-gold and OmniPay have also been accused of being a medium for money laundering, although this is questionable given that there were only 24 customer accounts holding over 10kg of gold (approximate value $200,000) by April 2006. As digital gold currency providers are not banks, they are not legally required to perform various sorts of "know your customer" background checks. However, many e-gold exchange providers require a high level of identification, sometimes more intrusive than a bank.

In January 2006, BusinessWeek reported on the use of the e-gold system by ShadowCrew, an 4000-strong international crime syndicate involved in massive identity theft and fraud. Omar Dhanani of Fountain Valley, California, connected to the ShadowCrew, is an e-gold customer and is said to have moved amounts ranging from $40,000 to $100,000 a week from proceeds of crime through e-gold.

In response, Chairman and founder, Dr. Douglas Jackson published a letter which stated that "e-gold operates legally and does not condone persons attempting to use e-gold for criminal activity. e-gold has a long history of cooperation with law enforcement agencies in the US and worldwide, providing data and investigative assistance in response to lawful requests." He further noted that "Our staff has participated in hundreds of investigations supporting the FBI, FTC, IRS, DEA, SEC, USPS, and others."