Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Saturday, August 25, 2007
THE iPhone HAS BEEN TRADED
THE iPhone HAS BEEN TRADED
Terry Daidone, the founder of Certicell contacted me this morning, and offered to make a trade for the iPhone. I traded it for a sweet Nissan 350Z and 3 8GB iPhones.
Here are more details
http://iphonejtag.blogspot.com/
Terry Daidone, the founder of Certicell contacted me this morning, and offered to make a trade for the iPhone. I traded it for a sweet Nissan 350Z and 3 8GB iPhones.
Here are more details
http://iphonejtag.blogspot.com/
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Panasonic "Pixi" cellphone picture dock is designed for social networking, idiots
http://rohitbrt.blogspot.com/
How the FBI spies on suspects
Details of a nifty piece of kit used by the FBI to spy on the internet activities of suspected criminals have emerged during a court case in the US.
CIPAV, which stands for Computer and Intenet Protocol Address Verifier, allows agents to track what connections a suspect's computer has made with other machines, for instance by e-mail or browsing the internet.
Al-Qaeda's pixels popped?
Al-Qaeda's pixels popped?
There's nothing like a tiff between image processing experts to put a few extra pixels in your Monday.
Last week Wired.com ran a story in which a computer scientist claimed he could establish whether al-Qaeda had altered a video prior to posting it on the internet.
Neal Krawetz said he had written a program which would enable investigators to establish whether a background had been added to disguise the true location in which an al-Qaeda video was recorded, and, if the image had been altered, which editing software was used. (Of limited significance, perhaps, but interesting nonetheless.)
A video by a prominent al-Qaeda spokesman posted last year, had, for instance, had a desk, computer and some books added after the original recording, Mr Krawetz said.
A computer security expert at Cambridge University last week took issue with Mr Krawetz's claims, however, claiming that his analysis was flawed.
Continue reading "Al-Qaeda's pixels popped?" »
The environmental cost of chat sessions and the paperless office
The rise of the paperless office, online banking, VOIP calls and e-commerce is not as green as you might think. The demand for electronic services is creating a boom in the construction of data centres to store and process these digital details on countless computer servers, and the need to keep these server farms cool and always-on is having a noticeable effect on the power grid.
http://rohitbrt.blogspot.com/
According to a recent report by America's Environmental Protection Agency, America's data centres require more power than all the television sets in the 50 states, combined. Put another way, the energy consumed is equivalent to 5.8 million homes – that's a lot of Amazon orders and Skype chat sessions. Put in monetary terms, it's $4.5 billion (£2.2 billion) worth of electricity consumption per annum, says Greenbang.com.
Continue reading "The environmental cost of chat sessions and the paperless office" »
Microsoft pipped in Beijing Olympic race?
Some confusion this week about whether the organisers of the Beijing Olympics had taken a swipe at Microsoft, or not.
Reports surfaced in the past couple of days that Lenovo, an official supplier to the Beijing Olympics, was to ship the majority of its computers to the games with XP, rather than Vista, installed.
This - the chairman of Lenovo, Yang Yuanqing, suggested, in remarks that were taken slightly out of context - was because the Olympics needed stable technologies and "if it's not stable, it could have some problems."
Implication: Vista was unstable.
Cue a series of rather unflattering (for Microsoft) headlines, including 'Unstable Vista Dumped for Olympics', 'Windows Vista Snubbed by Olympics organisers', 'Vista loses Olympics race', and, perhaps the most inspired, '2008 Olympics to run on XP'.
Continue reading "Microsoft pipped in Beijing Olympic race?" »
Germans aim to build laptop powered by body heat
Face it, batteries just aren't very reliable, I type with gritted teeth as I spy the rapidly dwindling battery power indicator on my MacBook. And, as we learned recently, lithium-ion batteries have a tendency to overheat, triggering expensive recalls from Nokia and Sony in the past year. Perhaps the researchers at Germany's Fraunhofer Institute, the same group that brought us the MP3 audio format, have found a solution: a new method of drawing electrical current from our body heat that could some day power laptops, mobile phones and gadgets.
Continue reading "Germans aim to build laptop powered by body heat" »
http://rohitbrt.blogspot.com/
Razr2: Motorola's hope in a handset
The follow up to Motorola's legendary Razr has shaved 2mm off the width of its predecessor, but still lacks a 'killer app'
To say Motorola has a fair bit pegged to the success of the Razr2 is a little like saying that our planet has a fair bit pegged to the sun continuing to combust.
Edward Zander, Motorola's chief executive, has himself acknowledged that the company didn't deliver many "really new 'wow'" products in the first half of the year, so it will be hoped – rather fervently – along the Motorola corridors, and those of its investors, that in the third and fourth quarters the handset maker can recover some ground.
There is a fair bit of ground to make up. Last month, the company posted a deficit of $28 million (£14.2 million), its second straight quarterly loss. Overall revenues for the second quarter of this year were down 19 per cent, from $10.8 billion to $8.7 billion (£5.5 billion to £4.4 billion), compared with the same quarter last year, while handset sales dropped by 40 per cent over the same period.
Motorola's hopes are in fact pinned to two devices. First came the Z8, a 'movie phone' which came pre-loaded with The Bourne Identity, and which was released a couple of months ago.
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/personal_tech/article2308099.ece
Move over geeks, women are top web users
Women aged between 25 and 49 are now spending more time on the internet than men as they become hooked on keeping in touch with friends online, according to figures published yesterday by the communications regulator Ofcom.
The figures are particularly pronounced in the 25 to 34 age group, in which women now account for 55 per cent of time spent online – demon-strating that the medium once thought of as dominated by solitary, glass-wearing male nerds is rapidly being feminised.
James Thickett, director of research with Ofcom, said: “Young women are finally finding content relevant to them on the internet. Social networking is what is driving a lot of usage; websites like Facebook and Bebo have a much higher female profile”.
Unknown two years ago, social networking sites – a combination of communication, information and gossip – have become particularly popular with women. Such sites are visted by more than six million Britons a month, and are still growing rapidly, according to figures complied by Ofcom in its annual audit of media consumption, the Communications Market Report.
Facebook and Bebo, as well as MySpace, which is owned by News Corporation, parent company of The Times, all have more young female users. Nearly a third of all Facebook users are women aged 18 to 34; only a quarter are men in the same range.
Adam Baum, media analyst with Gartner Group said: “I have no doubt that the reason behind the swing [towards women] is the rise of social networking sites. The time people spend on sites such as MySpace, Bebo and Facebook is by some magnitude higher than on ‘traditional’ websites and these new sites, which allow people to talk to each other, engage in friendships and share tastes, appeal to women.”
Internet usage shows marked gender divides. Forrester Research, the technology specialist, describes the net as “just another channel for women to do what they enjoy: shopping, talking, and caring”. Its data, based on research of young people across Europe, shows that 55 per cent of women aged 18 to 34 – or 4.13 million – use the medium regularly compared with 45 per cent – or 3.49 million – of men. Women are also likely to spend more time on networking sites when they are there.
Sharon Bailey, general manager for MSN, Microsoft’s online business, said that 78 per cent of the users on the company’s health and wellbeing site were women.
She said: “If learning how to use the technology was ever a barrier to women getting online, it isn’t today and, frankly, there are more interesting things for women to do on the web than in the past – especially when it comes to socialising.”
However, older men are still more prolific users of the internet than older women. Of those aged over 65, men account for 79 per cent of time online. Boys go online more than girls.
If the trends continue, analysts believe that they could eventually have an impact on television viewing. “The knock-on effect will be on traditional media,” Mr Baum said.
Female favourites
1 Google – 1.8 million unique vistors
2 MSN/Windows Live – 1.56 million
3 Yahoo! – 1 million
4 BBC – 882,000
5 Facebook – 855,000
6 eBay – 839,000
7 MySpace – 722,000
8 Microsoft – 702,000
9 YouTube – 661,000
10 Google Maps – 654,000
Source: Nielsen/NetRatings surveyed women aged 18-24
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article2310548.ece
http://rohitbrt.blogspot.com/
Google turns its attention to the stars
Google, having brought the earth into the living room, has turned its eye to the heavens to bring the sky at night indoors.
More than 250 million people have used Google Earth’s satellite pictures to look at their own homes from space or into their neighbours’ back gardens or viewed weird and wonderful geological features.
The internet facility has now been expanded to offer a glimpse of 100 million individual stars and 200 million galaxies as part of the Google Sky initiative.
The system has been designed to show the night sky from any point in the world and to explain what it is the user would see were they to peer up at the stars on a clear night.
Information on 20,000 celestial bodies, including stars, planets, galaxies, constellations and comets are available at the click of a mouse.
Just as Google Earth showed the planet in close up by providing access to satellite pictures, Google Sky offers photographs from a range of observatories, including the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope.
Thousands of images have been put together to provide a comprehensive view of the night sky with the ability to zoom in on cosmic features of interest.
The pictures were already available to the public through the internet but the Google site is designed to bring them together in an organised, easy-to-access manner.
The facility was created in partnership with a range of organisations including Nasa, the United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre and the Anglo-Australian Observatory.
Among the cosmic subjects with dedicated areas on the website are the constellations, photographs from Hubble, the moon and the planets.
Users can also take virtual tours through galaxies such as the Ursa Minor Dwarf and the Milky Way, and watch the life of a star from formation to supernova and beyond.
Information and pictures provided by Google Sky have been verified by professional astronomers but additional details can be added to the site in ‘layers’.
In one layer a professional astronomer has included details of dozens of solar systems which are known to have planets.
Enthusiasts can add their own information, whether to note the discovery of an exploding star or simply to offer a photograph of the sky from their own back garden, in associated layers. Some, after being checked for accuracy and suitability, will eventually be incorporated within the main site.
Dr Fransisco Diego, an astronomer at University College London, said at the launch at Google’s officies in London that the internet facility will be an aid to professionals and amateurs alike. He described it as “an amazing facility” and said: “It opens a window on to space for the general public that will let them explore the sky.”
Dr Carol Christian, of the Space Telescope Science Institute in the United States, was part of the team that created the site that she said would allow everyone to see “the wonders of our universe”.
She added: “Never before has a roadmap of the entire sky been made so readily available. Sky in Google Earth will foster and initiate new understanding of the universe by bringing it to everyone’s home computer.”
Jason Chuck, of Google, said the aim had been to create a system that offered an introduction to astronomy rather than a comprehensive database. He hope it would serve as a teaching aid as well as being a site to be browsed purely out of interest.
It also, he said, surmounted the problem of trying to stargaze during cloudy weather, especially during the current damp spell, and in cities where light pollution hides many stars.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2308536.ece
http://rohitbrt.blogspot.com/
Madden NFL 08
Most platforms, £35-£50. Ages 3+
Madden is the best known series of American football games and this is its meatiest incarnation. The graphics have been overhauled and the controls improved. Gone is the frenetic gamepad bashing, replaced by sensible and intuitive key combinations.
The players are superbly responsive. Indeed, star players are able to perform exquisite manoeuvres that set them apart from the rest of the team. However, this complex sport has limited appeal outside the US – a bit like serving hot dogs to a stadium of vegetarians.
http://rohitbrt.blogspot.com/Dear iPhone owner: your 300-page bill
AT&T customers have protested that absurdly comprehensive iPhone bills are damaging the environment
Owners of Apple's iPhone have been in revolt over the size of the bills they receive from their network, some of which run to hundreds of pages.
One 23-year-old was so incensed with the 300-page bill she received from AT&T, the official network of the iPhone, that she made a video of it and posted it on YouTube and other sites. The clip has now been viewed more than three million times.
Justine Ezarik, a graphic designer (and 'Lifecaster') from Pittsburgh, said that her bill was so voluminous that it arrived in a box rather than an envelope. "Save a forest – use e-billing," a slogan at the end of her 60-second video read.
AT&T's bills are larger than normal because they detail every event that has taken place on the network, even if no charge has been occurred.
http://rohitbrt.blogspot.com/
Monday, August 20, 2007
Virtual Bartender
Here's what might be the ultimate gadget for your home bar.
The My Fountain can store and dispense 16 chilled liquids. Put in your mixers, liquors and other beverages and the machine can dole out both single liquids or drinks based on recipes. The machine can also be password protected for different users. The machine sells for $2,500 and is available for pre-order now although it won't be out until next year. Combine this with an Enomatic for your wine and you could open your own automated bar.
http://rohitbrt.blogspot.com/
Treasury Bill Yields Fall Most Since 1987 on Money Fund Demand
Yields on U.S. Treasury bills fell the most in two decades on demand for the safest securities amid concern over a widening credit crunch.
Bill yields have fallen five straight days as money market funds dumped asset-backed commercial paper in favor of the shortest-maturity government debt. Three-month yields dropped the most since the stock market crash of 1987 and more than in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the U.S, as funds shunned assets that may be linked to a weakening mortgage market.
``The market is totally, absolutely, completely in fear mode,'' said John Jansen, who sells Treasuries at CastleOak Securities LP in New York. ``People are afraid that lots and lots of mortgage paper and mortgage paper derivatives of all sorts is completely opaque and they can't price it.''
The three-month Treasury bill yield fell 0.82 percentage point to 2.94 percent as of 2:54 p.m. in New York. It's the most since Oct. 20, 1987, when the yield fell 85 basis points, or 0.85 percentage point, on the day the stock market crashed, and eclipses the drop of 39 basis points on Sept. 13, 2001, the day the Treasury market reopened after the attacks. The yield has fallen from 4.69 percent on Aug. 13. The bills yielded about 7 percent in mid-October 1987, and 3.2 percent in the days before the September 2001 attacks.
``The psychotic atmosphere that's gripped the markets recently is still in place,'' said Tony Crescenzi, chief bond market strategist for New York-based Miller Tabak & Co. ``This is quite evident in the way the T-bill market is acting.''
`Get into Treasuries'
The flight to government debt helped the U.S. Treasury sell $21 billion in three-month bills today at a high discount rate of 2.85 percent, the lowest since 2.8 percent on May 16, 2005.
Investors fled even money market funds, considered among the safest instruments, on concern that the funds, which hold $2.5 trillion, have invested in risky collateralized debt obligations backed by subprime mortgage loans.
``We had clients asking to be pulled out of money market funds and wanting to get into Treasuries,'' said Henley Smith, fixed-income manager in New York at Castleton Partners, which oversees about $150 million in bonds. ``People are buying T-bills because you know exactly what's in it.''
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York said in a statement it won't re-invest the $5 billion of Treasury bill holdings maturing on Aug. 23 through its System Open Market Account to give it ``greater flexibility'' to manage reserves. It is the first time the Fed redeemed the Treasury bills since the 2001 terrorist attacks. Crescenzi said the move shows the Fed expects banks to borrow that much at the Fed's discount window.
Job Cuts
Treasuries headed higher earlier after SunTrust Banks Inc., the seventh-largest U.S. bank, said it expects to eliminate 2,400 jobs by the end of next year as part of a plan to cut costs. That may signal the credit crunch in the U.S. will cost jobs and may slow the economy.
The yield on the benchmark two-year note fell 11 basis points to 4.08 percent. The price of the 4 5/8 percent security due in July 2009 rose about 6/32, or $1.88 per $1,000 face amount, to 101.
Investors' focus is turning to ``the amount of job cuts you're going to have from this fallout,'' said Sean Murphy, a Treasury trader and strategist in New York at RBC Capital Markets, the investment-banking arm of Canada's biggest bank.
Slower Economy
More than half of the 21 primary government security dealers that trade with the Fed now expect the central bank to cut its target interest rate by next month from the current level of 5.25 percent.
``The Fed is going to lower the funds rate, it's a question of when,'' said Thomas Tierney, head of U.S. Treasury trading at Citigroup Global Markets Inc. in New York. ``Credit's gotten tighter, and it's going to slow the economy.''
The Fed on Aug. 17 cut the rate it charges banks for direct loans to banks by 0.5 percentage point to 5.75 percent. It was the first reduction in borrowing costs between scheduled meetings since 2001. The central bank said in a statement that risks to the economy have risen ``appreciably.''
The move failed to revive demand for asset-backed commercial paper in Europe. Solent Capital Partners LLP, a London-based credit-fund manager, is seeking to draw on emergency financing after it couldn't borrow in the commercial-paper markets.
``There is a lot to roll over in the commercial paper market and that has people getting nervous,'' said Ian Lyngen, an interest-rate strategist in Greenwich, Connecticut at primary dealer RBS Greenwich Capital.
Interest-rate futures traders see a 100 percent change the fed will lower its overnight lending rate between banks by its next meeting on Sept. 18. Eighty-six percent of those bets are for rates to drop to 4.75 percent, while the balance is for a cut to 5 percent.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aJbhFOZ2T.R4&refer=news
These gizmos are a must for techies
I can live without lots of high-tech gadgets.
Cell phones, for instance. I honestly do not want to be in touch.
I also have no need for a tiny palm-sized computer. My thumbs don't work that way. I've given two away and lost another.
Places like YouTube and MySpace bore me. There are good reasons why these people are not being paid for their work.
But some gadgets seem essential to me:
Wide-screen monitor
Now I can have a Web browser open on one part of the screen, e-mail on another and -- at times -- a small note-taking program on a third.There is plenty of room on the wide 19-inch screen. And by being able to see several programs at once, I can do true multitasking that makes my work more efficient.
That's what I tell my wife. And it's true.
But I avoid telling her that my favorite games look really great on the wide screen.
HDTV
Speaking of big, wide screens, my HDTV probably furnishes more enjoyment for the dollar than any other piece of electronics in my home.
The big screen and detailed picture makes watching Braves baseball games more like the view I get at Turner Field. And I can change channels when the team makes me mad.
The high-definition picture is so beautiful that I often watch entire programs about beavers, spiders and frogs just to admire the photography.
External hard disk
Years ago, when I first started backing up my data, I used floppy disks.Then I moved to CDs and finally DVDs.
No matter what I used, I was forced to sit at the computer and change disks, as if I were feeding quarters into a slot machine.
Now, I simply click the backup button. Everything fits on my 200-gigabyte external hard disk with room to spare.
When I buy a new computer, the external hard disk makes moving data simple. I plug it into a USB port and move all my e-mail, documents, music and photos with no hassle.
Digital camera
Photography is a hobby for me. But even casual snapshooters should own a digital camera.
A digital camera will change how you use photography.
If you have to take something apart, taking pictures along the way furnishes a great reminder when it comes time to put it back together. Or, you can bring a photograph of your den into the furniture store to get help selecting the right coffee table.
I find new uses for instant photos almost every day.
GPS
Wait a minute -- I don't own one. But I can imagine how nice it would be not to get lost all the time. Like most guys, I dislike asking for directions, so that's meant some very long trips.
My wife tells me we have to save for retirement so I need to postpone the purchase. But I see from reviews that pretty good units are dropping in price. I think I'll show her this column to prove that a GPS is essential.
http://www.charlotte.com/business/story/242307.html
Paris: I'll go on Big Brother
PARTY girl Paris Hilton is set to sign for Celebrity Big Brother after being offered more than £300,000, The Sun can reveal.
Ex-con Paris, 26, is desperate to raise her profile in the UK — and is prepared to be locked up for another three weeks in the Channel 4 house.
"She would easily be the star of the show — but obviously she won’t do it unless the money is right.”
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| Kidding ... Paris with pal's baby Pictures: WENN |
A Big Bro source said: “We told Paris, ‘Name your price’.
“We’re in firm talks, and it would be a fantastic coup to get her.”
An insider said Paris is aiming to show she is more than an “heirhead socialite”.
They added: “She wants people to see that she’s not a bimbo or a wildchild.
“The only time anyone hears about her is when she’s been up to no good — or saying something ridiculous.
“She’s actually smart and funny, with lots of interesting things to say.
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| Diary Room ... how she would look |
Paris would become the highest paid celeb on the show to date, with chiefs set to offer her a sum to dwarf Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty’s £300,000.
There is no hint yet which other celebrities will be go into house and share the Diary Room with Paris in January.
But appearing on Big Bro would cap a tumultuous year for the hotel heiress.
Her reality show The Simple Life was axed after the pair fell out.
Then in June she was thrown in jail for 23 days for driving offences.
Meanwhile Celeb Big Bro bosses are anxious to get the show back on track after the race row earlier this year.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2003230001-2007380511,00.html
Brit girls' excess boozing habits
Out for the count ... record numbers of young women are binge-drinking
Picture: GETTY
A GIRL lies limp on a bench, her fingers trailing the ground, empty bottles of alcopop by her feet.
Yet nobody bats an eyelid as they walk past — it’s a routine sight in town centres across the UK every weekend.
Despite repeated health warnings, British women are drinking more than their counterparts anywhere else in Western Europe.
Our excessive boozing has been linked to a rise in sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies and violent behaviour.
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| Party girl ... Kate often sinks five pints |
And with girls in their teens and twenties hitting the bottle harder than ever, medical experts are warning of an epidemic of liver disease in the next 15 years.
To reveal the full extent of the problem, Sun Woman set out to get a snapshot of a typical weekend on our streets and asked Sun GP Dr Carol Cooper to highlight the dangers heavy drinkers face.
We spoke to girls out on the town in Bristol, plus two people on the front line of the alcohol-abuse crisis — a taxi driver and an ambulance driver.
What we discovered provided a shocking insight into modern drinking habits . . .
It’s 8pm on a Friday night in Bristol, and the streets are buzzing with revellers.
Bright lights and signs advertise a string of bars with two-for-one deals. Student Kate Groves, 18, admits she sinks five pints of strong cider in an average night out, and reveals she narrowly escaped being seriously hurt after one binge.
“A few years ago I was house-sitting with my older sister,” she says. “We got drunk on gin and I passed out in a tent in the garden. Then I woke up to the smell of burning. In a drunken state my sister and her pals had poured gin all over my hair and set fire to it.
“When I realised what was going on I managed to stop the fire from singeing my hair too badly. At least it helped us learn our limits.”
But as she sinks another pint of cider, it’s clear Kate’s “limits” are not based on the official guideline of a maximum 14 units of alcohol a week for females.
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| Risk ... Rachel's pal had drink spiked |
And she isn’t the only reveller who has had a nasty experience.
Sarah Baron, 25, who works as a rehab manager, tells how she recently had to call an ambulance for a drunk friend.
“She had been drinking shots and was paralytic,” Sarah says. “She was sick all over me and couldn’t stand up. I was so worried that I rang 999.”
Cardiff University student Rachel Isaacs, 21, reveals another danger that arrived with the female drinking culture.
She told us: “Recently my pal had her drink spiked. We were out clubbing, but when she didn’t come back from the toilets I got worried.
“I went to see if she was OK, but she had collapsed and there was a guy I didn’t know huddled too close to her. He ran out.
She hadn’t had enough to pass out, so he must have slipped something in her drink. I got her up and took her home, and after a sleep she woke up groggy but fine.” Rachel adds: “You drop your guard when drinking.”
By the end of the evening, the scene is chaotic. Groups of men stumble towards the nearest taxi rank, kebabs in hand, leering at the remaining scantily-clad girls.
One group whistle back, flashing acres of flesh as they do.
They are briefly distracted by a friend being sick in an alley — but she soon recovers enough to carry on flirting.
Welcome to boozy Britain.
The paramedic
ADVANCED ambulance technician Alun Ross, 23, from Newcastle, works 12-hour shifts ending at 2am.
With binge-drinking costing the NHS something in the region of £1.7billion, and the number of drinkers taken to casualty departments having trebled since 24-hour licensing – Alun sees the impact of first-hand.
He says: “We get a shocking number of alcohol-related calls at the weekend. You know people with more genuine complaints are putting off ringing as they don’t want to be sat in A&E with drunks.”
Here Alun keeps a log of the alcohol-related incidents on his shift.
| |
2PM: Start shift.
6.30PM: The first incident of the night. We are called out by the police to two 15-year-old girls in town. They have been drinking vodka and are out of it. One is even lying on the ground screaming abuse. Because they’re just 15, the police can’t take the girls into custody so we take them to hospital. But when we arrive, the nurse says there has been a bad accident and they can’t waste their time babysitting drunk teenagers. The girls wait until their parents collect them.
7:30PM: We are called to a house party. A group of teens have been drinking and a 17-year-old boy has broken his ankle on a trampoline in the back garden.
9:00PM: A passer-by calls us out to an 18-year-old girl having a fit in the city centre. But when we arrive it’s clear that she is just drunk and rolling around on the pavement. Her friends swear at us but they help her up and move on.
11PM: Called out to a 17-year-old girl who has been bitten on the shin in a fight with another girl. She is waiting for a taxi with her sister when we arrive. We try to take her to hospital to get antibiotics but she refuses. The bleeding has stopped so we tell her to go the next day.
1AM: Police call us to a woman in her thirties who has apparently been assaulted. When we arrive she admits she had just been drinking heavily and had fallen over. She was embarrassed – especially when police with her asked us if we knew about somebody being dragged out of the river after jumping off the pier. We rush off to deal with it.
1:30AM: A 26-year-old woman has been out boozing heavily and has gone home and taken an overdose. When we arrive at the house the door is open and we find her lying on her bed. We admit her to hospital. It’s the last job of the night.
The taxi driver
TAXI driver Brian Hursburgh, 52, works eight-hour shifts from 2am to 10am, picking up revellers on Edinburgh’s streets.
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| Cabbie Brian ... has seen big changes |
Most of his customers have been boozing heavily, many of them women on hen parties.
Brian says: “If I had to choose to pick up either a stag or hen party, I would always prefer the stag.
“Some of the women I have had in the my car behave worse than any man.
“They drink excessively, fight, swear, vomit and then usually try to get away without paying.
Here, Brian gives an overview of a night’s work:
2AM: Start shift. The night has only just begun in Edinburgh, as several bars are now open until 5am.
Most of the stag and hen parties start drinking around noon, so they have been at it about 12 hours.
A couple of drunk girls who can’t keep up with their mates ask to go to their hotel. Once there, one of the girls asks me to turn the light on as she has lost her earring down her cleavage.
As I turn around to ask for the fare, she flashes her breasts at me. They both stumble out of the car laughing.
4AM: A few members of a stag party try to escape without paying. Claiming they wanted to stop at a cashpoint, they both run away. Unfortunately for them, one leaves his wallet in the cab.
6AM: Against my better judgement, I agree to take home a very drunk woman in her early twenties. Within minutes of getting in, she is slumped against the seat and passes out.
As I never touch someone to wake them, I try talking loudly for 20 minutes, but she isn’t reacting. As I don’t know where she lives, I decide my only option is to take her to a police station. There an officer manages to wake her.
8AM: Some drinkers who have been roaming the streets for a few hours suddenly realise they need to get home.
I pick up a woman who doesn’t seem that drunk. She is completely silent in the back of the car, and gets out to pay.
Handing me the fare through the window, she tells me my cab smells.
Turning round, I see she has vomited all over the back seat and the floor. I take the car to the nearest garage to clean it out, which takes over an hour, and decide to make that my last job.
The doctor
SUN GP Carol Cooper says the problem with binge-drinking in young women is not always the amount consumed, but the speed they drink it.
“The quicker alcohol is drunk, the more extreme the intoxication,” she says.
“Alcohol is a poison that the body can cope with if consumed slowly. But if it is large amounts during a short period of time, it can have massive effects on the brain and body. When I worked in A&E I would see as many as 20 cases of binge-drinking a night. In a GP’s surgery you tend to see its longer-term impact.”
Here are four examples Carol has seen in her surgery recently:
LIVER DAMAGE: A 25-year-old woman came in for a medical because she was taking out a mortgage. She was apparently in good health, but tests showed evidence of liver damage. That could only have been down to binge-drinking. Sadly with our boozy culture this will be more common.
PREGNANCY: A girl in her twenties visited me. She was pregnant after a boozy night and wanted a termination. She did not know who the dad was. When I asked about contraception, she said “I think the condom machine was empty” which showed how incapacitated drink had made her.
HEART PALPITATIONS: A 32-year-old who kept having palpitations came in. She had no family history of heart problems. She would booze at weekends and it would often get worse after that.
ACCIDENT: A young woman had a sprained ankle and a cut on her forehead – the accident happened on a night out. It badly needed cleaning up.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2001290023-2007370459,00.htmlhttp://rohitbrt.blogspot.com/
Aug 17 marks Compact Disc's 25th anniversary
Break open the bubbly because the spinning media that most pivotally began the worldwide transition to digital entertainment is 25 years old today.
On August 17, 1982, an assembly line in a suburb of Hanover, Germany began pumping out a modest collection of laser-encoded palm-sized discs, officially paving the path for what would later become the most popular album format.
According to Philips, the first CD was ABBA's The Visitors, an album that is now available on iTunes. CD players were brought to the market in Germany for the 1982 holiday season, by which time nearly 150 albums were already available. The format made its way to the US the following spring.
The Compact Disc was created from a partnership between Philips and Sony. Philips created most of the core technology while Sony helped with digital encoding for smooth playback. The two would later square off against each other in the 1990s as Sony's MiniDisc went in direct competition with Philips' Digital Compact Cassette. Though MiniDisc gained more widespread adoption, neither format was considered a success.
At the time, there was no emerging technology really competing against the CD format. Its biggest battle was against vinyl records, an institution by the 1980s, whih still remains the longest-running home audio format in the United States.
Sony and Philips also had to contend with video formats that had already tried to move into the digital age. A contentious battle between CED and Laserdisc resulted in two big losers. It was a risky time for digital technology, but the two companies ended up making the right product at the right time. According to Philips, over 200 billion CDs have been sold to date. That averages out to more than 250 CDs sold every second for the past 25 years. Philips says that every CD ever sold, if stacked on top of each other, would circle the earth six times.
It's a bittersweet milestone for the legendary format, as the outlook for the Compact Disc looks grim. Audio CDs are rapidly being replaced with digital music players, CD-ROMs have been scrapped for the higher capacity DVD-ROM format, and rewritable CD sales are on a decline.
However, the main technology for the CD is the backbone for DVD, HD DVD, and Blu-ray discs. The foundation set by Sony and Philips will remain a crucial part of entertainment mediums for years to come.
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33437/113/
http://rohitbrt.blogspot.com/
According to Philips, the first CD was ABBA's The Visitors, an album that is now available on iTunes. CD players were brought to the market in Germany for the 1982 holiday season, by which time nearly 150 albums were already available. The format made its way to the US the following spring.
The Compact Disc was created from a partnership between Philips and Sony. Philips created most of the core technology while Sony helped with digital encoding for smooth playback. The two would later square off against each other in the 1990s as Sony's MiniDisc went in direct competition with Philips' Digital Compact Cassette. Though MiniDisc gained more widespread adoption, neither format was considered a success.
At the time, there was no emerging technology really competing against the CD format. Its biggest battle was against vinyl records, an institution by the 1980s, whih still remains the longest-running home audio format in the United States.
Sony and Philips also had to contend with video formats that had already tried to move into the digital age. A contentious battle between CED and Laserdisc resulted in two big losers. It was a risky time for digital technology, but the two companies ended up making the right product at the right time. According to Philips, over 200 billion CDs have been sold to date. That averages out to more than 250 CDs sold every second for the past 25 years. Philips says that every CD ever sold, if stacked on top of each other, would circle the earth six times.
It's a bittersweet milestone for the legendary format, as the outlook for the Compact Disc looks grim. Audio CDs are rapidly being replaced with digital music players, CD-ROMs have been scrapped for the higher capacity DVD-ROM format, and rewritable CD sales are on a decline.
However, the main technology for the CD is the backbone for DVD, HD DVD, and Blu-ray discs. The foundation set by Sony and Philips will remain a crucial part of entertainment mediums for years to come.
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33437/113/
Treatment for Internet addiction suggested
Is your computer mouse your first thought when you get up in the morning? Are you obsessed with email, MySpace or YouTube? A psychiatrist said that such behavior should be put on the same level with other extreme addictive disorders and be treated as such.
According to Dr. Pinhas Dannon, a psychiatrist from Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine, says that Internet addiction should be taken seriously and grouped together with gambling, sex addiction, and kleptomania. In a new report, he describes Internet addiction as a "pathological condition that can lead to anxiety and severe depression."
Internet addiction is currently classified by mental health professionals as an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), a mild to severe mental health condition that results in an urge to engage in ritualistic thoughts and behavior, such as excessive hand-washing or, in the case of the Internet, Web surfing. This, however, needs to change, Dannon claims. “Internet addiction is not manifesting itself as an ‘urge.’ It’s more than that. It’s a deep ‘craving.’ And if we don’t make the change in the way we classify Internet addiction, we won’t be able to treat it in the proper way,” he said.
According to the psychiatrist, especially teenagers and empty nesters are at risk to suffer from Internet addiction disorder. Diagnosis of form this condition may be difficult, he said, but stated that it will reveal itself through loss of sleep, anxiety when not online, isolation from family and peer groups, loss of work, and periods of deep depression.
Dannon believes that Internet addiction can be treated effectively, if it is viewed as any other extreme addiction. This treatment, he suggests would include medication such as Serotonin blockers and Naltrexone, which are typically used in cases of kleptomania and pathological gambling.
According to Dr. Dannon, Internet addiction is an "inevitable" product of modernization: “They are just like anyone else who is addicted to coffee, exercise, or talking on their cellular phone. As the times change, so do our addictions,” he said.
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33445/113/
http://rohitbrt.blogspot.com/
Internet addiction is currently classified by mental health professionals as an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), a mild to severe mental health condition that results in an urge to engage in ritualistic thoughts and behavior, such as excessive hand-washing or, in the case of the Internet, Web surfing. This, however, needs to change, Dannon claims. “Internet addiction is not manifesting itself as an ‘urge.’ It’s more than that. It’s a deep ‘craving.’ And if we don’t make the change in the way we classify Internet addiction, we won’t be able to treat it in the proper way,” he said.
According to the psychiatrist, especially teenagers and empty nesters are at risk to suffer from Internet addiction disorder. Diagnosis of form this condition may be difficult, he said, but stated that it will reveal itself through loss of sleep, anxiety when not online, isolation from family and peer groups, loss of work, and periods of deep depression.
Dannon believes that Internet addiction can be treated effectively, if it is viewed as any other extreme addiction. This treatment, he suggests would include medication such as Serotonin blockers and Naltrexone, which are typically used in cases of kleptomania and pathological gambling.
According to Dr. Dannon, Internet addiction is an "inevitable" product of modernization: “They are just like anyone else who is addicted to coffee, exercise, or talking on their cellular phone. As the times change, so do our addictions,” he said.
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33445/113/
Now I've got a killer cleavage
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Vicky Cordwell, a mum of two from Northampton, is a tomboy with a former love of biker leathers and jeans.
But Trinny and Susannah have said 'on yer bike' to her old style and fixed her up with an ultra-feminine look.
Skirts and dresses are a no-go for me: a motorbike accident in my teens has left me with bad scars on my legs so I rarely get them out.
Arthritis in my ankles makes wearing heels painful too so I usually just wear jeans and trainers.
I feel like I’ve just settled into that middle bracket where I don’t look young and I don’t look old – I just look frumpy and in between!
Arriving at the shoot in cut-offs and a t-shirt, the girls said I looked practical … but that my outfit did nothing for me.
Susannah was so sweet though. I’ve put on weight recently and am feeling a bit podgy but she rushed to reassure me.
She said I had a lovely figure and great boobs I should show off more.
CLICK HERE TO SEE VICKY'S MAKEOVER VIDEO
I worry I’m getting too old to look good but she said, “Look at me. I’m 44, with three children and I can still make the best of myself.”
When I think of the ripping I expected, I couldn’t believe how positive she was being.
She said my hair was a bit too dark but that combined with my pale colouring it meant I could wear almost any colour with bold prints being a must for me.
I couldn’t bear the first dress we tried on as it was woolly and striped but the trousers that followed were great.
They looked too masculine for me on the hanger but flared out nicely at the bottom and I loved them on.
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But the final dress was the best. A really bold print, it made me instantly feel more comfortable and the wrap style made my waist feel smaller.
I haven’t worn leggings since I was 18 but Susannah rightly guessed that they’d hide the scars near the back of my knees yet still show off my legs – perfect.
Even better, I had some height for the first time in ages thanks to the wedges I wore.
I think I could comfortably go out for the evening in them and I've paired them with jeans and a shirt on a night out since.
I forgot how much more confident and sexy heels make you feel - I could really hold my head high.
We left my hair as we ran out of time but probably the best bit of my whole day was learning more about make-up.
I usually wear quite heavy eye colours but the make-up artist suggested much softer shades.
She recommended a better skincare brand and I've noticed a huge difference to my skin.
Instead of just fingers, she applied the foundation with a brush and used a soft pink blusher instead of brown.
My husband was the first to comment, saying how much softer and lovely my face looked.
My friends have been full of compliments too and if I'll take one thing away from my day it's the positive words.
From Susannah to my mates, people have reminded me that I'm not too old and actually pretty gorgeous! 
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2005550000-2007380050,00.html
Lindsay Lohan's lusty love life
LINDSAY Lohan’s mother once said to her, "God, if you dated all the people they said you dated, you'd be dead by now". She’s got a point.
At the ripe old age of 20, Hollywood’s sexiest redhead has been linked to nearly every eligible bachelor in town.
From McFly’s Harry Judd to Die Hard star Bruce Willis (with a couple of generations in between), Li Lo’s alleged hook-up tally is off the chart.
In February this year alone, Lindsay’s supposed to have got frisky with Jared Leto, Jamie Burke, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Leo DiCaprio and Benicio del Toro.
Of course, you shouldn’t believe all you read. Or all you hear from Lindsay herself.
The saucy star admits she makes stories up to baffle the press, "I say things that aren't true a lot".
Foxy Lindsay’s known for her dating double standards too. "If I'm going to give my body to someone, I'd rather them not be with other people, but I want to be able to if I like someone else."
Hmm, so where did Lindsay get the inspiration for this lusty love life from? "Sex and the City changed everything for me, those girls would just sleep with so many people."
It seems Carrie and the girls have a lot to answer for. Click on the images above for the full gossip on loopy Lohan’s hot men.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2001290023-2006450680,00.html
MTV Ditches Lily Allen, Lily Allen Ditches America
That's because Lily Allen still isn't allowed into America after she punched a photographer earlier in the year. And Lily Allen's inability to get an American visa means that she's been forced to cancel her forthcoming American tour - and her spot at the MTV video music awards has been scrapped, too. This is a situation where nobody wins - Lily Allen doesn't get the exposure and cash that American fame would bring her, Lily Allen's American fans don't get to see her in concert and everyone in Britain still isn't able to get rid of Lily Allen. Unless Lily Allen decides to go and tour Russia. Which she probably should, for our sakes.
The MTV VMAs haven't been kind to the British this year. After the MTV nominations were announced a couple of weeks ago, British nominee Amy Winehouse took all the drugs in the world and had to go to hospital and other British nominee Lily Allen was banned from all of America because she assaulted a photographer in June and couldn't get a visa. It's at times like this that we wish fellow MTV nominee Fergie was British too, because with this kind of luck she'd have probably fallen down the stairs or something.
Anyway, now it seems that Lily Allen Vs The American Immigration Department isn't quite as easy a fight as Lily Allen Vs Cheryl Cole or Lily Allen Vs Lady Sovereign, because the assault charge means Lily Allen still can't get a visa to work in America, and this has serious consequences for the future of her American career. Next month Lily Allen was due to go on an American tour - to make up for the last one that Lily Allen cancelled because she was a bit sad - but now that's had to be cancelled. Worse, Lily was due to perform at the MTV VMA ceremony next month with Kanye West and Common, which would have been the highlight of a show watched by hundreds of millions of record-buying fans, and MTV has only gone and ditched Lily Allen too. News reports:
Lily Allen has been dropped from the MTV Video Music Awards. The British pop star - who was banned from the US last month after having her visa revoked at Los Angeles airport - has been scrapped from the line-up for the Las Vegas ceremony on September 9 because of complications over her entry into the States. A source said: "MTV were desperate to get Lily and they're furious with her visa situation. They've decided to pull the plug because they didn't want to leave it to the last minute to find out if she could or couldn't make it."
But forget about the setback to Lily Allen's career - what about us? Now that Lily Allen is still banned from America it means she's stuck in this country and we have to keep reading stories about how Lily Allen drew a picture of some nice clothes or hides in carrier bags sometimes. At least all hope isn't lost for you American Lily Allen fans - to replicate the Lily Allen live experience all you need to do is kidnap a bear cub from the local zoo, superglue a slice of pepperoni to its chest to make it look like it's got a third nipple, slap it in a ballgown and make it dance to some warmed-up 1980s reggae. What could be easier than that, you lucky bastards?
Read more:
MTV Video Music Awards Cancels Lily Allen From Line-Up - News.com.au
http://rohitbrt.blogspot.com/
Skype blames Patch Tuesday for triggering blackout
Skype Ltd. today blamed last week's Windows security updates for triggering a bug in its software that brought down the Internet telephony service for more than 48 hours.
Service was restored late Friday.
The Skype peer-to-peer network became unstable and suffered a critical disruption" beginning last Thursday, said spokesman Villu Arak in a statement posted on the company's site. "The disruption was triggered by a massive restart of our users' computers across the globe within a very short time frame as they rebooted after receiving a routine set of patches through Windows Update."
According to Arak, the large number of restarts started a chain reaction that brought down the service. After users' machines rebooted and came back online, Skype was hit with a "flood" of attempted log-ins that, combined with a smaller-than-usual number of systems available to handle the peer-to-peer traffic, caused the blackout.
"Skype has now identified and already introduced a number of improvements to its software to ensure that our users will not be similarly affected in the unlikely possibility of this combination of events recurring," Arak added. The company did not specify what that combination of events may have been and did not explain how this month's updates were different from past rounds of patches.
For example, Microsoft Corp.'s security updates have been on their current schedule of the second Tuesday of each month since October 2003, before Skype left beta testing. And required restarts are the norm for many of Microsoft's security updates. Nor was the quantity of restarts last week -- five of August's nine updates required a reboot -- out of line with previous months. In July, for instance, four of six updates also restarted affected PCs.
Some Windows users weren't buying the explanation. "If a 'massive restart' was the cause of the problem, it should have happened long ago," said Marcus McCurdy in a comment posted on the istartedsomething blog. "Definitely calling BS on this one."
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9031558&intsrc=news_ts_head
http://rohitbrt.blogspot.com/
"High School Musical 2" proved the Disney Channel can boast of more than a one-hit TV wonder.
Friday's premiere drew an estimated audience of 17.2 million, which would make it the most-watched basic cable program ever, according to Nielsen Media Research. It more than doubled the viewership of the first movie, "High School Musical," which drew 7.7 million in 2006.
The basic cable record had been held by a "Monday Night Football" game on ESPN in 2006, which was watched by 16 million.
"High School Musical" has become a cultural phenomenon with hit records, concerts and newly minted young stars including Ashley Tisdale and Zac Efron. The sequel followed the summer adventures of students Sharpay and Troy and their fellow Wildcats of East High.
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On the Net:
Disney Channel:
http://home.disney.go.com/tv/index
Model pics with size-0 phone
JUST when you thought SONY ERICSSON couldn't come up with another stonking handset, they pull an ace out of the bag.
I use a Cyber-shot phone and love the top quality snaps they take but it's fair to say I'd prefer something a little bit more Kate Moss-like in shape.
So meet the K770i - at just 14.5mm thin, you'll hardly notice you are carrying it.
It boasts a 3.2 megapixel camera with auto-focus and 3x digital zoom like the firm's other top-range handset, although I'm not sure about the truffle brown colour!
There's a powerful photo light for snapping away indoors and with nearly a 2in screen, it's a reasonable size for viewing pictures back or doing a bit of editing via the phone itself.
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Phonewise it has all the usual features you'd expect plus an FM radio with RDS and new stereo Bluetooth for hooking up a wireless headset to listen to music with much better sound than the old mono technology.
Out in the autumn, there's no price yet but it will be dependent on your network contract.
Scientists Discover 'Tail' on Distant Star
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| Image captured by Galex satellite shows 13 light year-long 'tail' trailing Mira |
The Galaxy Evolution Explorer satellite, known as Galex, was launched four years ago with the aim of studying the history of the universe, using a telescope equipped with ultraviolet detectors. Finding a gigantic tail on a fast-moving star was not something astronomers had anticipated. Chris Martin, the principal investigator on Galex, announced the discovery.
"The Galaxy Evolution Explorer has discovered that Mira has a vast, turbulent tail stretching across interstellar space," Martin told reporters. "And it's truly remarkable that this star, which has been studied for centuries, has surprised us with a completely new and unexpected phenomenon."
Mira's "tail" is composed of carbon, oxygen and other chemical elements. The discovery may help scientists understand how old, dying stars like Mira shed material that is later incorporated into new stars and planets. The astronomers calculate that the oldest parts of the tail were left behind tens of thousands of years ago, as the star grew and gravity weakened farther from its center.
"In fact, if we had had, 30,000 years ago — If Neanderthal man had had ultraviolet eyes and could look above the atmosphere, he could have seen the beginning of this tail forming," said Martin.
The age of the tail makes it something of a time capsule, says Columbia University astronomer Michael Shara, like the rings of a tree. "Because we have this tail that was generated over 30,000 years, we can look at small individual pieces of the tail and deduce what the mass loss rate was like and what the chemistry along the tail was, which gives us some hint as to the differentiation of elements in the atmosphere of Mira before it started to shed mass."
In addition to the tail, images from the Galex satellite show a curved shock wave in front of Mira as it speeds through the surrounding space at 130 kilometers per second. Astronomer Mark Siebert of the Carnegie Institution says that the bow shock, as they call it, and the random-looking tail behind the star resemble a picture of a bullet in supersonic flight. "In front of the bullet there's a leading shock, much like Mira's bow shock. And then trailing the bullet there's also a classic turbulent wake, which is very reminiscent of the structures that we see behind Mira."
Seibert says Mira is a very common type of star, so it may be that this kind of tail is actually not very rare and that more will be discovered. In any event, this one is the first.
Shara, the Columbia University astronomer, says the new and completely unexpected discovery is an example of what can happen as astronomy advances.
"Any time astronomers take a look at a new part of what we call observation space — that is, they start using a telescope which has much better angular resolution like Hubble, or much greater sensitivity in the ultraviolet like Galex, or a very large field of view like Galex — they tend to find something new, and that's exactly what's happened here," he said.
The astronomers say they are really just beginning to study this huge structure. They published their discovery in the journal Nature.
http://www.voanews.com/english/Science/2007-08-20-voa29.cfm
http://rohitbrt.blogspot.com/
Sarah's X-rated sex advice
MEET Sarah Hedley, the Sun Online’s sauciest blogger yet.
Glamorous Sarah – who is Mates Condoms' sexpert and editor of Scarlet magazine – will be on hand to answer your sexual dilemmas and give your love life a boost with her sexy ideas.
Email her at sarah@the-sun.co.uk and she will do her best to give you advice.
Now read on to find out what she says about spanking, reaching orgasm and enjoying a saucy festive season.
Hello Sarah, I am now with my second sexual partner and I’m having difficulty reaching orgasm through penetrative sex. I’m worried it will put my new boyfriend off. What can I do?
Morticia
A whopping 70 percent of women can’t climax through penetrative sex without addition clitoral stimulation.
In other words, this is the norm, and if your partner is put off by it he probably just needs reassurance that his performance isn’t to blame.
Ultimately, the problem is unbelievably easy to fix: simply stroke your clitoris with your fingers or a vibrating toy during sex, or ask your partner to do it for you.
Smaller toys are best as they don’t get in the way or intimate our other halves, yet they have just as much impact. Works for me!
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Hi Sarah, how can I give my husband a triple-Xmas?Jo
Buy an adult porn film you can watch together. Some people are of the belief that women aren’t turned on by porn, but clinical studies where women’s sexual responses were monitored, show that we’re as physically aroused by visual stimuli as men are.
However, some porn films are downright offensive, so make sure you choose wisely and pick something that promises to cover a wide range of sex acts.
Agree that either one of you is free to hit ‘fast forward’ if something offends you, but also ask him to hit the ‘pause’ button when he sees something he really likes.
Then, if you’re willing, re-enact the scenes together – it’ll be the hottest Christmas of his life!
Hi Sarah. When my wife and I have sex I liked to be spanked. My wife says she likes it and that it turns her on seeing my flesh change colour. Is this wrong? Bill
Sexual activity between two consenting adults is never wrong.
Furthermore, sexual spanking is a very popular bedroom activity, particularly in this country – oversees it has been referred to as ‘the British fetish’ since Victorian times, and records of sexual spanking date as far back as 100 AD in Vatsyayana’s famous Sanskrit text, The Kama Sutra.
Now that you feel vindicated, why not go wild and experiment with different shaped whips and paddles? Your wife could use liquorice laces to whip you with, and then eat them afterwards.
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Dear Sarah, whenever I indulge in intercourse with my wife, the skin on my penis burns and the burning can last round two to three days, sometimes even a week. Can you suggest something to prevent this? Amir.
Amir, you must visit a doctor at once. While it’s possible that something as simple as genital dryness could be causing chaffing, which can feel like a burning sensation and be remedied by using lubricant, you need to have a GP rule out any other possible ailments.
In the meantime, if you must have sex wear something like Mates Natural condoms, which won’t reduce sensation for you, but will protect your old chap from further irritation.
Skype outage: An unprecedented wake-up call
Many Internet companies, especially services we love to use, have a get-out-of-jail-free card. We tend to forgive failures much easier than we would with any other non-Internet company. This continuous outage of the Skype service could be powerful enough event to change this scenario in less than two days.
Skype's online blog has a running status of the system state. So far they have indicated only two main systems are having problems: Sign in/registration, and peer-to-peer. That page also has a running blog of their efforts to restore the system. It reads, "The Skype system has not crashed or been victim of a cyber attack. This problem occurred because of a deficiency in an algorithm within Skype networking software. This controls the interaction between the user's own Skype client and the rest of the Skype network." That entry was posted yesterday at 10 pm GMT. They updated their blog again 4 hours later to say they were well on their way toward a fix. Then 15 hours later to say "...we are gradually moving to new shifts of fresh brains to help out those getting to well deserved few hours of sleep," indicating no real progress because they were still down. Then they posted again a few hours later. And again.
The most recent entry (posted at 11 am GMT) now reads:
"We're on the road to recovery. Skype is stabilizing, but this process may continue throughout the day. An encouraging number of users can now use Skype once again. We know we're not out of the woods yet, but we are in better shape now than we were yesterday. Finally, we'd like to dispel a couple of theories that we are still hearing. Neither Wednesday's planned maintenance of our web-based payment services nor any form of attack was related to the current sign-on issues in any way. We'll update you again as soon as we can. Thanks for hanging tight."
As of the time of this writing, Skype has been down for about 36 hours. We've seen intermittent access, but nothing reliable. No calls, no sign ins, no chats, no ability to keep in close contact with anyone we regularly Skype In/Out with. And it's beginning to cause a burn that may be irreparable.
Let's be realistic.
It's not like Skype is a tool some of us rarely use. For many Skype In/Out users it's an ongoing component of our business model. Some even use it as their primary means of keeping in contact with customers, family members and others. We're at a point where we rely on such technology. We expect it to just work. Yes, it is cheap or even free, but does that matter? It's a communication tool – communication is essential to our lives and if communication does not work as we are used to, there is a serious and disruptive problem.
I don' think anyone who might be upset today would be out of line for thinking that way. All of us could forgive the occasional 4-hour outage, maybe even 8-10 hours provided it occurred off our normal peak usage. But for 36 hours? In today's world? With software redundancy and backup servers? I mean, what is this problem at Skype all about?
It seems very clear this is more than just an "algorithm deficiency." If the entire Skype network can be taken down for 36 hours for some internal reason, then it's either outside of Skype's control or it would almost have to be by design. The networking admin folks, completely independently of any software dev teams, should've been able to go back to yesterday's backup and get it back up and running after the first 8-10 hours went by without a software fix/solution. In that model, maybe we would've lost our most recently added contacts, but it still would've worked.
It really makes one wonder just how fragile the system is and what Ebay is doing to keep it up and running. Due to the length of this outage I'm beginning to wonder in the back of my mind if there isn't some kind of political struggle taking place within Ebay between the Skype folks (based mostly in England) and the Ebay folks (based mostly in the U.S.). I doubt that's happening, but one can only speculate.
And if there is no involvement of Ebay in this whole outage, I am certain that Ebay is watching this thing with a very concerned mind. Skype is virtually self-destructing itself in front of Ebay's eyes. Skype might finally turn out to be the $4 billion mistake many thought when Ebay bought it.
These kinds of software outages are extremely rare. Even when contractors accidentally severe Internet backbone connections with big backhoes and such, they're usually back up in a few hours. And this "algorithm deficiency" is just amazing in its scope. I have been trying to think of any large service like Skype, with its 10+ million active users online at any given time, where it has been down for 36+ hours without any solution in sight. I can't think of any, and certainly none which have affected me personally like this.
We've heard those rumors that a malicious attack could have taken Skype down. We don't know if it did or not. And it doesn't really matter. Skype should be able to keep its service up no matter what happens in the backend. We shouldn't even have to discuss what may have happened.
That brings us to Skype's information policy. The last post updating us on what's going on was at 6 am EST today – almost 12 hours ago at the time of this writing. I believe that people who rely on this service have a right to find out what is going on more than twice a day. It clearly looks like Skype may not understand just how serious this problem is or even how to fix it. And the frightening part of that reality is it's their system.
I have no doubt that this outage will be a wakeup call for many users, small businesses and service providers. This outage showcases the vulnerability of VoIP overall, a young technology that wants to replace the good old phone. This outage can reach well beyond Skype, it can impact other services such as Microsoft's messengers, AOL's messengers and Yahoo's messenger as well.
Businesses certainly will think this whole thing over and think twice before making what obviously was a mistake again. In a best case scenario, only Skype will lose users and the trust it's built over the past few years. In a worst case scenario, the confidence in all VoIP messengers will be damaged. And I think that confidence component will be in the back of our minds for some time to come.
I wonder what the analysts will say once Skype is back up and the dust settles over the reasons why this has happened. I'd like to hear your thoughts and comments. Please post them below.
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33447/130/
http://rohitbrt.blogspot.com/
Skype's online blog has a running status of the system state. So far they have indicated only two main systems are having problems: Sign in/registration, and peer-to-peer. That page also has a running blog of their efforts to restore the system. It reads, "The Skype system has not crashed or been victim of a cyber attack. This problem occurred because of a deficiency in an algorithm within Skype networking software. This controls the interaction between the user's own Skype client and the rest of the Skype network." That entry was posted yesterday at 10 pm GMT. They updated their blog again 4 hours later to say they were well on their way toward a fix. Then 15 hours later to say "...we are gradually moving to new shifts of fresh brains to help out those getting to well deserved few hours of sleep," indicating no real progress because they were still down. Then they posted again a few hours later. And again.
The most recent entry (posted at 11 am GMT) now reads:
"We're on the road to recovery. Skype is stabilizing, but this process may continue throughout the day. An encouraging number of users can now use Skype once again. We know we're not out of the woods yet, but we are in better shape now than we were yesterday. Finally, we'd like to dispel a couple of theories that we are still hearing. Neither Wednesday's planned maintenance of our web-based payment services nor any form of attack was related to the current sign-on issues in any way. We'll update you again as soon as we can. Thanks for hanging tight."
As of the time of this writing, Skype has been down for about 36 hours. We've seen intermittent access, but nothing reliable. No calls, no sign ins, no chats, no ability to keep in close contact with anyone we regularly Skype In/Out with. And it's beginning to cause a burn that may be irreparable.
Let's be realistic.
It's not like Skype is a tool some of us rarely use. For many Skype In/Out users it's an ongoing component of our business model. Some even use it as their primary means of keeping in contact with customers, family members and others. We're at a point where we rely on such technology. We expect it to just work. Yes, it is cheap or even free, but does that matter? It's a communication tool – communication is essential to our lives and if communication does not work as we are used to, there is a serious and disruptive problem.
I don' think anyone who might be upset today would be out of line for thinking that way. All of us could forgive the occasional 4-hour outage, maybe even 8-10 hours provided it occurred off our normal peak usage. But for 36 hours? In today's world? With software redundancy and backup servers? I mean, what is this problem at Skype all about?
It seems very clear this is more than just an "algorithm deficiency." If the entire Skype network can be taken down for 36 hours for some internal reason, then it's either outside of Skype's control or it would almost have to be by design. The networking admin folks, completely independently of any software dev teams, should've been able to go back to yesterday's backup and get it back up and running after the first 8-10 hours went by without a software fix/solution. In that model, maybe we would've lost our most recently added contacts, but it still would've worked.
It really makes one wonder just how fragile the system is and what Ebay is doing to keep it up and running. Due to the length of this outage I'm beginning to wonder in the back of my mind if there isn't some kind of political struggle taking place within Ebay between the Skype folks (based mostly in England) and the Ebay folks (based mostly in the U.S.). I doubt that's happening, but one can only speculate.
And if there is no involvement of Ebay in this whole outage, I am certain that Ebay is watching this thing with a very concerned mind. Skype is virtually self-destructing itself in front of Ebay's eyes. Skype might finally turn out to be the $4 billion mistake many thought when Ebay bought it.
These kinds of software outages are extremely rare. Even when contractors accidentally severe Internet backbone connections with big backhoes and such, they're usually back up in a few hours. And this "algorithm deficiency" is just amazing in its scope. I have been trying to think of any large service like Skype, with its 10+ million active users online at any given time, where it has been down for 36+ hours without any solution in sight. I can't think of any, and certainly none which have affected me personally like this.
We've heard those rumors that a malicious attack could have taken Skype down. We don't know if it did or not. And it doesn't really matter. Skype should be able to keep its service up no matter what happens in the backend. We shouldn't even have to discuss what may have happened.
That brings us to Skype's information policy. The last post updating us on what's going on was at 6 am EST today – almost 12 hours ago at the time of this writing. I believe that people who rely on this service have a right to find out what is going on more than twice a day. It clearly looks like Skype may not understand just how serious this problem is or even how to fix it. And the frightening part of that reality is it's their system.
I have no doubt that this outage will be a wakeup call for many users, small businesses and service providers. This outage showcases the vulnerability of VoIP overall, a young technology that wants to replace the good old phone. This outage can reach well beyond Skype, it can impact other services such as Microsoft's messengers, AOL's messengers and Yahoo's messenger as well.
Businesses certainly will think this whole thing over and think twice before making what obviously was a mistake again. In a best case scenario, only Skype will lose users and the trust it's built over the past few years. In a worst case scenario, the confidence in all VoIP messengers will be damaged. And I think that confidence component will be in the back of our minds for some time to come.
I wonder what the analysts will say once Skype is back up and the dust settles over the reasons why this has happened. I'd like to hear your thoughts and comments. Please post them below.
Update: August 18, 2007 - 6:00pm EDT
Several commenters have indicated that Skype is free and there is no justification for complaining about a free service. Skype has more than one model of use. Computer to computer is free. Land line to computer is free (SkypeIn). And computer to land-line (SkypeOut) is a pay-service and one of high value. Many companies rely on SkypeOut for their primary mode of communication and that's just a fact, be it right or wrong. Skype offers great advantage in cost savings, costing about 2 U.S. cents per minute. Skype Unlimited allows potentially even better savings. Skype also utilizes a computer resource that an employee or user would already have at their desk, along with a common shared Internet access which would also already be wired. There are several viable reasons to use something like Skype in a business model.
The primary complaint of this article is that in today's day and age, where we have redundancy, hot swappable components in servers, such as memory, processors, disks, networking cards, etc., a multi-billion dollar corporation should have a network admin team which would be able to redirect anything that would fail in their system in just a matter of minutes. In this case, Skype indicated it was a software error. And after months and months of use with nearly 10 million users per day, for any software algorithm deficiency to rear its head to such a degree that the entire system goes down for two business days is, to my knowledge, unprecedented and it should be unacceptable. If it truly was a software deficiency, then Skype's software developers weren't doing their job in the first place.
In speaking with various associates about this matter, the general consensus was that a one to four hour window of downtime would be acceptable for such a failure. Anything beyond that and in today's day and age there really is no excuse for it. As this particular event unfolded, two solid business days were affected. Sixteen hours of downtime can be significant depending on what you do for a business. A few hours here and there is pretty much acceptable and forgiveable in any business model. And if it's not, then you're paying a premium for the five nines of up-time. But apart from that premium, sixteen contiguous business hours moves away from the forgiveable and into the realm of "okay, it's time to rethink". And I think that's where many people should be about now.
Relying on any single-source vendor, be it for VoIP or anything else, is something that's proving undesirable regardless of the cost savings. At the very least, many people should be looking at what their back-up contingency plan will be.
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33447/130/
http://rohitbrt.blogspot.com/
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