Saturday, December 29, 2007

Miss France keeps crown after photo controversy...

Reuters

Fri Dec 28, 2007. PARIS (Reuters) - Miss France 2008 has kept her crown, contest organizers said Friday, after a row over suggestive photographs that saw members of parliament, a bishop and the minister for overseas territories spring to her defense.

However she will not be able to compete in the Miss World or Miss Universe contests, where she will be replaced by Miss New Caledonia.

Valerie Begue, 22, from Reunion, won the beauty pageant, which is taken more seriously in France than in many other countries, in a televised ceremony on December 8.

But her reign threatened to be short-lived after a magazine published a risque series of photographs in which she was seen lying in a crucifixion-like pose while wearing a bikini or licking condensed milk in a suggestive manner.

The rules of the contest forbid participants from appearing in nude or provocative photographs and the head of the Miss France contest, Genevieve de Fontenay, called for Begue to renounce her title when the pictures emerged.

Begue refused, saying the photographs, taken three years ago, had been published without her consent and in the face of wide public support, the organizers relented.

"We felt that, as she had been elected in front of 9 million television viewers, faced with this public that had never seen the photographs, we couldn't take the title from her," de Fontenay told a news conference in Paris.

The affair stirred a major controversy in Reunion, the French Indian Ocean department (region) that Begue comes from, and several members of parliament and local politicians spoke out in her defense.

The bishop of Saint-Denis de La Reunion said that while the photograph of Begue lying on a cross like Christ insulted Christians, it was a "youthful error" and he refused to be used as an ally by those seeking to strip her of her title.

Christian Estrosi, minister for overseas territories, also defended Begue on French radio during the week and he welcomed the decision.

"Reunion, beyond any political and social differences has defended Valerie Begue with heart and talent but has also defended the image of a courageous, determined and successful Reunion," he said in a statement.

(Reporting by Elizabeth Pineau, Writing by James Mackenzie)

Friday, December 28, 2007

Neuroticism hard on the heart: study...

Health Reuters

Wed Dec 26, 2007. NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Neurotic people are more likely to die from cardiovascular disease, while being extroverted seems to protect people from dying from respiratory illness, UK researchers report based on a study they conducted.

Neuroticism -- a proclivity toward worry and emotional ups and downs -- is related to anxiety and depression, which could help explain the relationship with heart trouble, note Beverly A. Shipley of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and colleagues in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.

Reports on the health effects of both neuroticism and extroversion, which is the tendency to be friendly and outgoing -- have been mixed, the researchers note. To clarify the relationship, Shipley and her team looked at mortality in 5,424 middle-aged adults who were followed for 21 years after they completed personality tests.

While an increasing degree of neuroticism was tied to an increased risk of death from any cause, the relationship disappeared after the researchers adjusted for other relevant factors such as body weight, alcohol use, social class and education.

Risk of death from cardiovascular disease also climbed as a person's level of neuroticism rose, and the relationship remained significant after statistical adjustment.

Extraversion reduced a person's likelihood of dying from respiratory disease, but had no other effects on mortality.

Based on the findings, the researchers conclude, the neuroticism-cardiovascular disease death link could be related to genes, but socioeconomic and behavioral factors are apt to be involved as well.

SOURCE: Psychosomatic Medicine, November-December 2007.

© Reuters 2007 All rights reserved

Brothers hand out Christmas cash at mall

Reuters

Wed Dec 26, 2007. NEW YORK (Reuters) - Shoppers got a Christmas Eve surprise on Monday when a pair of brothers handed out $100 bills at a mall on Long Island, New York.

Police responded to a call from security staff at the Sunrise Mall in the town of Massapequa, concerned that the give-away might create a scene or involve counterfeit bills.

Instead, officers found a simple case of Christmas charity where calm prevailed as the businessmen, aged 45 and 41, gave out the money at the entrance to the shopping center, police said.

"These two brothers say they do this every year. They say they've been blessed and just want to give something back," Detective Sergeant Anthony Repalone said.

"They gave it to people who they thought needed it. The people were very appreciative."

Police declined to identify the brothers, respecting their wish to remain anonymous.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by John O'Callaghan)

© Reuters 2007 All rights reserved

Referee pulls out red card, then a gun....

Wed Dec 26, 2007. "KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - A Malaysian referee took out his gun and fired warning shots in the air after a local soccer match turned unruly following the suspension of a player, a newspaper said Tuesday. The referee, who was also a policeman, ran to...";

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - A Malaysian referee took out his gun and fired warning shots in the air after a local soccer match turned unruly following the suspension of a player, a newspaper said Tuesday.

The referee, who was also a policeman, ran to his patrol car to get his gun after players mobbed him for showing the red-card to one of them, the New Straits Times said.

"We are investigating as to whether the policeman was justified in taking out his firearm and discharging it, and also why he had it with him during the match," it quoted Hussin Ismail, police chief in the southern Johor state, as saying.

The policemen was taken into custody for suspected misuse of firearms.
Five players, aged between 23 and 40, were also being held for questioning and could be charged for rioting, the paper said.

(Reporting by Jalil Hamid, Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

© Reuters 2007 All rights reserved

Student wins lottery, leaves school...

Reuters

Thu Dec 27, 2007. BEIJING (Reuters) - A college student withdrew from school after winning the 5 million yuan ($683,000) jackpot in a lottery in China' eastern city of Nanjing, local media reported on Thursday.

The second-year student at the Jiangsu Maritime Institute, identified by the nickname Yong to protect his identity, was the sole first-prize winner in the "Double Colour Ball" issued by the China Welfare Lottery on Tuesday, the Beijing News said.

"After winning the lottery, Yong told his roommates that he would share 2,000 yuan with each of them," it added.

Yong informed school authorities of his winnings, and had returned home.

"We are not sure if he will return to school, but we hope he will eventually finish his education," the paper quoted Yong's teacher as saying.

The Communist Party abolished lotteries in China after taking power in 1949, denouncing them as a practice of decadent capitalists. But the country launched state-run lotteries in 1987 amid market-oriented reforms.

Lotteries have become increasingly popular both among the poor and the newly rich in China, where many forms of gambling are banned. Per capita income in China's urban areas is roughly $1,900 a year and about $600 a year in rural areas.

Lottery-related crimes have been on the rise as well, and underground lottery schemes have become rampant across the country in recent years, bankrupting many families.

Last month, China set up its first help centre for lottery addicts, offering counseling and legal assistance.

(Reporting by Beijing newsroom, Editing by Ken Wills and Sanjeev Miglani)

© Reuters 2007 All rights reserve

Student wins lottery, leaves school...

Reuters

Thu Dec 27, 2007. BEIJING (Reuters) - A college student withdrew from school after winning the 5 million yuan ($683,000) jackpot in a lottery in China' eastern city of Nanjing, local media reported on Thursday.

The second-year student at the Jiangsu Maritime Institute, identified by the nickname Yong to protect his identity, was the sole first-prize winner in the "Double Colour Ball" issued by the China Welfare Lottery on Tuesday, the Beijing News said.

"After winning the lottery, Yong told his roommates that he would share 2,000 yuan with each of them," it added.

Yong informed school authorities of his winnings, and had returned home.

"We are not sure if he will return to school, but we hope he will eventually finish his education," the paper quoted Yong's teacher as saying.

The Communist Party abolished lotteries in China after taking power in 1949, denouncing them as a practice of decadent capitalists. But the country launched state-run lotteries in 1987 amid market-oriented reforms.

Lotteries have become increasingly popular both among the poor and the newly rich in China, where many forms of gambling are banned. Per capita income in China's urban areas is roughly $1,900 a year and about $600 a year in rural areas.

Lottery-related crimes have been on the rise as well, and underground lottery schemes have become rampant across the country in recent years, bankrupting many families.

Last month, China set up its first help centre for lottery addicts, offering counseling and legal assistance.

(Reporting by Beijing newsroom, Editing by Ken Wills and Sanjeev Miglani)

© Reuters 2007 All rights reserve

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Coffee, tea linked to lower risk of kidney cancer...

Health Reuters

Mon Dec 24, 2007. (Reuters Health) - Coffee and tea lovers may have a slightly reduced risk of developing kidney cancer, research hints.

The findings, based on an analysis of 13 previous studies, suggest that coffee and tea may be protective against kidney cancer, while milk, soda and juice seem to have no effect one way or the other.

Across the studies, people who drank three or more cups of coffee a day were 16 percent less likely to develop kidney cancer than those who averaged less than a cup per day. And those who sipped just one 8-ounce cup of tea each day had a 15 percent lower risk of the disease than non-drinkers.

The findings appear in the International Journal of Cancer.

While the study cannot show that coffee or tea directly lower kidney cancer risk, there are reasons why the beverages could be beneficial, according to the researchers, led by Dr. Jung Eun Lee of Harvard Medical School in Boston.

For example, they explain, coffee and tea may increase the body's sensitivity to the blood-sugar-regulating hormone insulin, and researchers suspect that insulin levels over time may affect kidney cancer risk.

Coffee and tea also contain antioxidant compounds that may help protect cells in the kidney from cancer-promoting damage, the researchers point out.

For their study, the investigators combined the results of 13 long-term studies that included a total of 530,469 women and 244,483 men. Each study collected information on participants' diets at the outset and then followed them for seven to 20 years.

Coffee and tea consumption were linked to a lower risk of kidney cancer even when the researchers accounted for a number of factors known to affect people's risk of the disease -- such as obesity, smoking and high blood pressure.

"Our results suggest that coffee and tea consumption may be associated with a modestly lower risk of (kidney) cancer, whereas intakes of milk, juice and soda were not associated with risk," Lee's team writes.

They say more studies are needed to understand why coffee and tea might be protective against the disease.

SOURCE: International Journal of Cancer, November 15, 2007.

Revealed: The seven great medical myths...

Reuters

Mon Dec 24, 2007.LONDON (Reuters) - Reading in dim light won't damage your eyes, you don't need eight glasses of water a day to stay healthy and shaving your legs won't make the hair grow back faster.

These well-worn theories are among seven "medical myths" exposed in a paper published Friday in the British Medical Journal, which traditionally carries light-hearted features in its Christmas edition. Two U.S. researchers took seven common beliefs and searched the archives for evidence to support them.

Despite frequent mentions in the popular press of the need to drink eight glasses of water, they found no scientific basis for the claim.

The complete lack of evidence has been recorded in a study published the American Journal of Psychology, they said.

The other six "myths" are:

* Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight

The majority of eye experts believe it is unlikely to do any permanent damage, but it may make you squint, blink more and have trouble focusing, the researchers said.

* Shaving makes hair grow back faster or coarser.

It has no effect on the thickness or rate of hair regrowth, studies say. But stubble lacks the finer taper of unshaven hair, giving the impression of coarseness.

* Eating turkey makes you drowsy

It does contain an amino acid called tryptophan that is involved in sleep and mood control. But turkey has no more of the acid than chicken or minced beef. Eating lots of food and drink at Christmas are probably the real cause of sleepiness.

* We use only 10 percent of our brains

This myth arose as early as 1907 but imaging shows no area of the brain is silent or completely inactive.

* Hair and fingernails continue to grow after death

This idea may stem from ghoulish novels. The researchers said the skin dries out and retracts after death, giving the appearance of longer hair or nails.

* Mobile phones are dangerous in hospitals

Despite widespread concerns, studies have found minimal interference with medical equipment.

The research was conducted by Aaron Carroll, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Regenstrief Institute, Indianapolis, and Rachel Vreeman, fellow in children's health services research at Indiana University School of Medicine.

(Editing by Steve Addison and Paul Casciato)

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Microsoft's piracy fight gains momentum in China...

Technology Reuters

Fri Dec 21, 2007. SHANGHAI/SEATTLE (Reuters) - In his first official visit to the United States in 2006, China President Hu Jintao arrived for dinner at Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) Chairman Bill Gates' house with a gift for the host.

Shortly before Hu's Seattle visit, the Chinese government had issued a decree requiring all personal computers manufactured in China to come with a licensed operating system before leaving the factory gates.

Now, nearly two years later, that gift keeps giving. The software company co-founded by Gates is seeing the benefits of more stringent intellectual property policies in China, with a decline in piracy rates and improved results at its mainstay Windows division.

China is by no means the worst offender.

More than a dozen other countries -- including Indonesia and Ukraine -- have higher software piracy rates, according to a study from the Business Software Alliance and IDC. None of those countries, however, offers the promise of China, the world's second-largest PC market, growing at more than 10 percent a year.

China's piracy rates, the level of pirated software in a particular country, dropped to 82 percent in 2006 from 90 percent in 2004, the study said.

"In China, where piracy is the way things are done with respect to software, any marginal money Microsoft gets back is super important," said Kim Caughey, portfolio manager and senior analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group.

Reducing software piracy and selling more expensive versions of Windows are ways for Microsoft to generate sales growth that exceeds the overall PC market, a task made difficult since its global market share already tops 90 percent.

Microsoft said improvements in fighting piracy accounted for about $164 million of the $822 million revenue gain at the Windows client unit in the quarter ended September.

Windows is Microsoft's most lucrative product with an operating margin exceeding 80 percent.

"Every pirated copy that Microsoft converts into a paying customer all flows to the bottom line," said Morningstar analyst Toan Tran. "It could have a dramatic effect on its profit margin."

PIRATES AT WORK

Despite the progress being made, pirated software is still readily available on the streets of Shanghai.

Fuzhou Road in the former British concession near the Bund, an area famous for bookstores and art boutiques, is also locally renowned as a place to buy pirate PCs and software.

The small alleyways running off Fuzhou Road host dozens of pirate PC shops, which usually have no signs. Locals ask passersby if they want to buy "cheap" PCs or software before leading potential customers to the store.

Once a computer is assembled, the customer is given a list of pirated software options, ranging from Microsoft Office to Adobe Systems' (ADBE.O: Quote, Profile, Research) Photoshop. If a software program is not there, it can be ordered.

The government decree requiring PC makers to pre-install an operating system sought to address the problem of Chinese consumers buying computers without software and then opting to buy less expensive counterfeit software.

Beijing went one step further, calling on any Chinese companies wanting to do business with the government to run properly licensed software.

"The whole situation is heading in the right direction," said Hao Jing, spokeswoman at Founder Technology Group (600601.SS: Quote, Profile, Research), China's second-largest PC maker. "Pre-installing genuine copyrighted operating systems has become an industry standard."

Earlier this year, the Chinese police and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation seized $500 million worth of pirated software, including counterfeit Microsoft and Symantec (SYMC.O: Quote, Profile, Research) products, from a Chinese piracy syndicate.

"We've seen in the last two years significant emphasis on legitimate intellectual property use in China," said Cori Hartje, director of Microsoft's genuine software initiative.

Microsoft said it needs to do more in educating consumers to the benefits of getting genuine software like access to software updates and better security. Improved technology also serves to deter piracy.

Windows Vista, the latest version of its operating system, has been more effective in preventing piracy. Microsoft has said piracy rates for Vista are half the level of its predecessor Windows XP.

In Vista's first major update due out next year, Microsoft said it plans to close two primary methods used by software pirates to illegally copy Windows Vista.

Passport office in need of spellcheck...

Reuters

Thu Dec 20, 2007. (Reuters) - Israel's national passport office could have done with a good spellchecker.

First it stamped "Ministry of the Intrerior" in English in new batches of passports. Then it advised Israelis of the misspelling in a jumbled newspaper advertisement Thursday that only compounded the mistake.

"Due to a technical error in some of the Ministry's stampsthe document you received may have been stampedwith an flawed stamp," the Interior Ministry said in a notice in the English-language Jerusalem Post.

The newspaper said its advertising department was responsible for mistakes in the ministry's ad, which urged people with the faulty passports to apply for new documents.

(Writing by Jeffrey Heller, Editing by Peter Millership)

© Reuters 2007 All rights reserved

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Disco babes bring Saturday night fever to Sundays...

Reuters

Itsy-bitsy pink bikini gets serviceman jail...

Reuters

Tue Dec 18, 2007 SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A Singapore national serviceman who sashayed into a lift early one morning wearing only a pink bikini has been handed a day's jail and a S$11,000 ($7,529) fine by a court in the city-state, a newspaper said on Tuesday.

Tan Wen Zhong, 21, admitted to five charges, including "outraging the modesty" of the woman who shared the lift with him and "fraudulent possession of women's underwear," Singapore's Straits Times reported.

The paper said a subsequent police search of his apartment turned up 46 pieces of women's underwear and bikinis as well as four obscene films.

Tan, who was completing Singapore's mandatory national service when he committed the offence in April, was also accused of grabbing a 23-year-old woman's buttocks a year ago and of shoplifting a pair of sunglasses two years ago.

In mitigation, Tan's lawyer said his client had been badly affected by his parents' divorce during his
formative years.

(Reporting by Sebastian Tong; Editing by Jerry Norton)

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Author of nasty letters from Santa sought...

Reuters

Fri Dec 14, 2007. OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's post office and police are trying to track down a "rogue elf" who wrote obscene letters to children on behalf of Santa Claus, a newspaper reported on Friday.

The Ottawa Citizen said at least 10 nasty letters had been delivered to little girls and boys in Ottawa who wrote to Santa this year care of the North Pole, which has a special H0H 0H0 Canadian postal code. Return letters from Santa are in fact written by an 11,000-strong army of Canada Post employees and volunteers.

"We firmly believe there is just one rogue elf out there," a Canada Post spokeswoman told the paper.

Canada Post's popular "Write to Santa" program -- which last year delivered more than a million letters to children in Canada and around the world -- has been shut down in Ottawa until the offender is caught.

(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Peter Galloway

© Reuters 2007 All rights reserve

Export and Backup All Emails from Outlook to Your Gmail Account...

Digital Inspiration Technology Guide Written by Amit

Friday, December 14, 2007. Export and Backup All Emails from Outlook to Your Gmail Account. Sachin writes - “I have few thousand email messages inside Microsoft Outlook (a pst file) organized in various folders. I know it is possible to download emails from Gmail to Outlook using POP3 or IMAP but is the reverse path possible.”

Sachin is looking for a trick to archive all Outlook email messages (and folders) to his online Gmail account for two reasons - one is secure backup and two, he will be able to access his old emails from any computer.

Solution: It is quite easy to transfer Outlook emails to your Gmail mailbox. Here’s a step by step guide:

Step 1: Enable IMAP in your Gmail account and then configure Outlook (or Outlook Express or Windows Live Mail) to sync with your Gmail address via IMAP. Read this guide.

Step 2: Import your Outlook PST file into a Personal folder that is different from your default Gmail Inbox.

To import, click File -> Import And Export -> Import from another program or file. -> Next -> Personal Folder File (.pst) -> Next.

Select the PST file that contains your email, then pick the email folders that you want to import in Outlook and click Finish.

Step 3: Select the Personal folders that you want to backup online and copy them your Gmail Folder in Outlook (see screenshot).

In the Folder List, right-click the folder you want to copy and click Copy Folder name. Click the Gmail Folder in Outlook to copy that folder in that location. You can repeat the steps as needed for other folders.

That’s it. Your Outlook email will soon become available inside your online Gmail Inbox.

Caution: The migration from Outlook to Gmail can take a long time if you have very large Outlook pst file or if your internet connection speed is slow. Therefore, consider removing all large emails before moving them to your Gmail via IMAP.

Related: Is Your Outlook+Gmail Slow ?

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Prisoner gets compensation over cockroaches...

Tue Dec 11, 2007. JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli judge has ordered the country's prison authority to pay an inmate over $1,000 in compensation after he complained of having to share a cell with cockroaches.

Mordechai Yehudai filed a lawsuit complaining of poor hygiene, a lack of fresh air, broken windows and inmates who smoke in a handful of cells, a spokeswoman for the Israel Prisons Service said.

"The Prisons Service mistreated the plaintiff in a number of ways, including ... broken windows, cockroaches as well as incarceration with smokers," judge Irit Cohen wrote in her verdict, according to newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

The spokeswoman said the inmate's cell would be cleaned up. Yehudai has been held in three different prisons and has had complaints about conditions in all of them.

"Prisoners have the right to sue us whenever they see fit and we comply with the court's rulings," she said.

© Reuters2007All rights reserved

Teen caller tricks White House...

Reuters

Wed Dec 12, 2007. REYKJAVIK (Reuters) - A teen-ager says he convinced the White House he was Iceland's president and managed to schedule a call with George W. Bush but was found out before he got to talk to the U.S. president.

"My call was transferred around a few times until I got hold of Bush's secretary and managed to book a call meeting with Bush the following Monday evening," Vifill Atlason, 16, told Reuters.

The teen-ager posed as Icelandic President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson when he made the call on Dec 1.

Icelandic police turned up at his door two days later -- the day of the planned call -- and took him in for questioning.

"They told me the CIA had called the National Commissioner of the Icelandic police and asked if the police could try and find out where I received that phone number from," said Atlason.

The teen-ager said he was unable to recall where he discovered the telephone number for the White House.

"I know I've had it on my phone card for at least 4 years now and that an Icelandic friend gave it to me, but I don't remember who," he said.

At a White House news conference Monday, Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino said her understanding was that Atlason had called a public line "that anybody can call," according to a transcript.

Local police confirmed the National Security Unit at the national police headquarters had asked them to bring Atlason in.

Jon Bjartmarz, Chief Superintendent at Iceland's national police headquarters, said Icelandic police had not spoken to their U.S. counterparts about the matter. He declined to say how police were tipped off about Atlason's call.

"As far as we're concerned, there will not be any further investigation, and I don't know if the American government is taking any action because of this," he said.

Saturday, December 01, 2007

Prostitute auctions sex for charity....

Reuters

Thu Nov 29, 2007 (Reuters) - A Chilean prostitute has auctioned 27 hours of sex to raise money for the country's largest charity during an annual fund-raising campaign.

Maria Carolina became an overnight celebrity in the conservative Roman Catholic country, making news headlines and appearing on talk shows since she made her unusual donation to the televised charity event, which runs for 27 hours starting on Friday evening.

"I've already auctioned off the 27 hours of love," Maria Carolina told Reuters on Wednesday, saying she had raised about $4,000. "One of my clients already paid. It seemed like a good deed to him."

Adult prostitution is legal in Chile. Chile's two-day Teleton fundraiser is endorsed by television stars and aims to raise funds for poor, disabled children.

Speaking about Maria Carolina's unusual donation, campaign organizer Mario Kreutzberger said he would not encourage "immoral" activities, but said he would accept her pledge.

"Everyone can do what they want, but if someone tells me that they'll do something immoral ... I'm not going to encourage it," Kreutzberger, who as "Don Francisco" hosts the long-running "Sabado Gigante" program on the U.S. Spanish-language Univision network, told local media.

But Maria Carolina, who advertises her services on the Internet, defended her money-raising scheme.

"There are people who are going to be donating money that's a lot more questionable than mine," she said. "The only thing I did was publicize it."

(Reporting by Antonio de la Jara; writing by Lisa Yulkowski; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

© Reuters2007All rights reserved

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Windows XP outshines Vista in benchmarking test...

Tech News on ZDNet By Suzanne Tindal, ZDNet Australia

Nov 27, 2007 New tests have revealed that Windows XP with the beta Service Pack 3 has twice the performance of Vista, even with its long-awaited Service Pack 1.

Vista's first service pack, to be released early next year, is intended to boost the operating system's performance. However, when Vista with the Service Pack 1 (SP1) beta was put through benchmark testing by researchers at Florida-based software development company Devil Mountain Software, the improvement was not overwhelming, leaving the latest Windows iteration outshined by its predecessor.

Vista, both with and without SP1, performed notably slower than XP with SP3 in the test, taking over 80 seconds to complete the test, compared to the beta SP3-enhanced XP's 35 seconds.

Vista's performance with the service pack increased less than 2 percent compared to performance without SP1--much lower than XP's SP3 improvement of 10 percent. The tests, run on a Dell XPS M1710 test bed with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo CPU and 1GB of RAM, put Microsoft Office 2007 through a set of productivity tasks, including creating a compound document and supporting workbooks and presentation materials.

In response to the test, a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement that although the company understood the interest in the service packs, they are "still in development" and will continue to evolve before their release. "It has always been our goal to deliver service packs that meet the full spectrum of customer needs," the spokesperson said.

If SP1 does not evolve sufficiently, it could be another setback for Vista, with many businesses waiting to adopt the operating system until the service pack is released.

A year after its launch, only 13 percent of businesses have adopted Vista, according to a survey of IT professionals.

Microsoft admits that the launch has not gone as well as the company would have liked. "Frankly, the world wasn't 100 percent ready for Windows Vista," corporate vice president Mike Sievert said in a recent interview at Microsoft's partner conference in Denver.

Microsoft has not done enough to make users aware of the benefits of Vista, NPD analyst Chris Swenson said at the conference. "The problem is that there are a lot of complex new features in Vista, and you need to educate consumers about them...much like Apple educating the masses about the possibilities of the iPhone or focusing on a single feature or benefit of the Mac OS in the Mac-versus-PC commercials. Microsoft should be educating the masses about the various new features in a heavy rotation of Vista in TV, radio, and print ads. But the volume of ads (for Vista) has paled in comparison to the ads run for XP."

XP has proved to be more popular than its younger sibling, with the first six months of U.S. retail sales of box copies of Vista 59.7 percent below those of XP's in the equivalent period after its release.

Microsoft has had to allow PC manufacturers to continue to sell XP on new PCs, setting a deadline for the last sale at January 31. However, the pressure from manufacturers and consumers has been so great that Microsoft has been forced to extend the deadline another five months, until June.

According to Microsoft, sales of Vista have been picking up, with the software giant reporting 88 million units sold.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

German Police Unable To Crack Skype Protocol....

Soft32.com News

Published on Software, Security, Communications, Internet November 26, 2007, 8:13 am by Adrian Flucuş, Soft32

Officials in the German police, have complained that Skype calls cannot be intercepted and listen to, which makes the police work more difficult.

Everybody knows about phone tapping. Altough most of us have heard about it from the movies, we all know that this is what the police does in order to find out what are the bad men’s intentions and eventually send them to jail based on those evidence. Well, those days might be over as the VoIP calls are becoming more frequent even among the bad guys.

According to German president of police, Joerg Ziercke, the combination of strong encryption and the methods inherent to VoIP makes wiretapping impossible for the police. “We can’t decipher it. That’s why we’re talking about source telecommunication surveillance — that is, getting to the source before encryption or after it’s been decrypted,” Ziercke told Reuters.

Skype doesn’t use an open-source protocol for its VoIP service so the way the voice is encrypted before transmission is not available to the public. Also, the information is send over public networks in a series of small packets which take different routes over the network thus making them impossible to track.

Ziercke also told that the Police also needs legal means to perform online scanning of remote hard-drives. This would allow the authorities to install trojan-horse spyware programs remotely on targeted computers and find any information that is relevant for the investigation. Currently, the german law prohibits the use of spyware programs in police investigation.

Microsoft takes steps to prevent another WGA meltdown...

Computerworld

By: Gregg Keizer 28/11/2007.

WGA project manager says his team will be better prepared for future outages. Three months after a major failure of Microsoft's anticounterfeit system fingered legitimate Windows XP and Vista users as pirates, a senior project manager has spelled out the steps his team has taken to prevent a repeat.

Alex Kochis, the senior project manager for Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), used a company blog to outline new processes that have been put in place, including drills that test the WGA group's response to an outage like the one in late August.

"We've revamped the monitoring that is used to track what's happening within our server infrastructure so that we can identify potential problems faster, ideally before any customer gets impacted," Kochis said. "[And] since August, we have conducted more than a dozen 'fire-drills' designed to improve our ability to respond to issues affecting customers or that could impact the quality of the service."

Those drills, Kochis said, have ranged from pre-announced simulations to surprise alerts that test a specific scenario. "The team is now better prepared overall to take the right action and take it quickly," he promised.

In late August, servers operating the WGA validation system went dark for about 19 hours. Customers who tried to validate their copy of Windows -- a Microsoft requirement for both XP and Vista -- during the blackout were pegged as pirates; Vista owners found parts of the operating system had been disabled, including its Aero graphical interface.

Several days after the weekend meltdown, Microsoft blamed preproduction code for the snafu and said that a rollback to earlier versions of the server software didn't fix the problem immediately, as expected.

Microsoft, however, downplayed the incident, claiming that fewer than 12,000 PCs had been affected. The company's support forums, however, hinted that the problem was much more widespread: one message thread had collected over 450 messages within two days and had been viewed by 45,000 people.

One analyst gave Kochis' status report a mixed grade.

"I was looking for two things from Microsoft, and the first was that they would acknowledge that there was a failure," said Michael Cherry, an analyst at Kirkland, Wash.-based Directions on Microsoft. "If they couldn't do that, it would show a real lack of insight into the severity of the problem. But they called it an 'outage' [here], which I don't think they had actually admitted before."

Cherry was more than on the mark. While Kochis called the incident a "temporary service outage" in his newest post, three months ago, he denied that the word applied. "It's important to clarify that this event was not an outage," he said on August 29, five days after the servers went down.

"Second," said Cherry, "I wondered if Microsoft would acknowledge that failures are going to happen, that something's going to go wrong no matter how many drills they have. And when that happens, what would they do? But I don't see anything like that here."

Kochis said the WGA team has also changed the way it updates the validation service's servers, beefed up free WGA phone support to round-the-clock coverage and improved the speed of delivery of "get-legal" kits to users who discover they're running counterfeit software, but he made no mention of any modifications to the antipiracy program itself, how it's implemented or how users are handled when it determines they're using fake copies of Windows.

"They should make it so that any impact [of an outage] is on Microsoft and not on the customer," Cherry said.

Back in August, Kochis claimed that Microsoft's policy was to do just that -- err on the side of the customer -- but he contended that the outage had been an anomaly. "Our system is designed to default to genuine if the service is disrupted or unavailable," Kochis said then. "If our servers are down, your system will pass validation every time. [But] this event was not the same as an outage, because in this case the trusted source of validations itself responded incorrectly."

That's not good enough, according to Cherry. "If users can't validate, for whatever reason, Microsoft should leave them in their current state, but not invalidate them, or validate them, at least until the next check," he said.

"You have to take the utmost care before you deny something to someone that they have purchased in good faith," he concluded.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Plasma vs. LCD or is it Myths vs Lies...

CNET Home audio & video Forums

by gabereyes - 14/11/07 12:51

So I got bored and did a google search on Plasma vs LCD.

Wow I never heard so much crap in my life and its still all about bashing plasma, One said that plasma bulbs dim over time, what bulb are they talking about I didnt know plasma TV's used a bulb, a second one stated that most people can hang there own LCD TV's but should get a professional to hang there plasma because they are harder to install, they use the same type of mount and mount the same way, Ive mounted both and its the same drill both ways.

Then everyone talks about room lighting, and how a plasma is only good in low lighting, what is low lighting? is it only one window and one light 60watts only, the fact is every person has had a CRT TV in the room at one time and plasma and LCD are brighter then a CRT TV and no TV type look good in direct light, everyone says that they have a bright room but I have never went to a house that was brighter then a retail store, so what is all this low lighting only all about.

Next is the glare issue dont buy a plasma because of the glare, but its ok to buy an LCD with a glassy type screen, most living rooms have one or two walls with windows so you should have a 25%-50% chance of having glare from a window, so why is 80%-90% of people concerned about it? I have no idea.
but what about my lamp? well lets think about it you are watching TV not you lamp so maybe you should move it.

and the list goes on and on.
plasma's uses to much power.
they run hot.
they are not as sharp.
they burn in.
they dont last very long.
they are too heavy.
you cant lay them down.
they leak gas.
you have to refill the gases.
you have to replace the bulbs.
my friend said dont buy them.

So I dicided to make a list for LCD TV's
dont buy an LCD because
they leak liquid
you have to replace the crystals
they are to lite and can fall over
they cant do a deep black level
they dont have good colors
they loss image quality at an angle
you have to replace all the bulbs at one time.
they have motion blur
the lie about there contrast or dynamic contrast
the lie about there refresh rate and viewing angle's
they are only good for still images not motion
they are harder to install
they dont work in cold climates

and the name is too long, Liquid crystal display, and the new light-emitting diode Liquid crystal display, wow that a hard to say fast five times.

I think this should be a simple thing
do you want a TV with a good black level and colors look at a TV with a glossy screen (LCD or Plasma), if you dont want glare look at a TV with out a glossy screen but it will most likely not get good blacks and/or colors.

Or size could make the choice easier, if you need a 37 inch or smaller, and if you need a 58inch or bigger.

Everything else they say about LCD and Plasma is just really not that important and/or BS.

Sorry I needed to vent on this subject.

Thanks for reading
Gabe

Message was edited by: admin to correct spelling in subject line

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Bank manager gives woman loans for sex...

Reuters

Fri Nov 9, 2007 8:24am BERLIN (Reuters) - A German bank manager gave loans to a woman for sex and then embezzled thousands of euros to buy the silence of her relatives, authorities said on Thursday.

When the man realized he could not offer the jobless woman a loan because of her poor credit history, he offered to lend her the money personally in return for sexual favors, said a spokesman for a court in the southern town of Tuebingen.

The 31-year-old then stole the money from the bank. The pair continued their arrangement for the next three years.

In total, the man diverted some 520,000 euros ($760,000) from clients' accounts, of which he gave about 70,000 euros to the woman, and kept 40,000 euros for himself.

The biggest chunk of the cash went to her relatives who were blackmailing the bank manager, a married man with children. The manager had himself told her cousin about the sex deal.

"As incredible as it sounds, that's what he told us," the Tuebingen court spokesman said. "The cousin was suspicious and she called him to ask how the woman had got a loan."

The court said bank officials uncovered the ruse after probing irregularities linked to the man's handling of other loans. The court gave the man, who confessed, a jail sentence of three years and nine months.

© Reuters2007All rights reserved

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Online paedophile ring busted by Aust cops...

ZDNet Australia

06 November 2007. An investigation instigated by Australian authorities and followed up by 18 European police forces has led to more than 90 arrests in eight countries, authorities reported today.

Operation Koala led to 40 arrests in Britain, 21 in France, 11 in Spain, eight in Sweden, five in Belgium, four in Italy, two in Iceland and one in Denmark, the officials from the Eurojust prosecutor's organisation said.

The arrests included not only the network's operators but also its clients who viewed sexually graphic images of children on the Internet.

"The inquiry is ongoing; it will result in further arrests," Eurojust president Michael Kennedy said.

Jim Gamble, from the UK's Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre, said 46 people had been arrested in the past five months in the UK as part of the operation, and further arrests were expected.

Eurojust and the European police organisation, Europol, coordinated the efforts to crack the group.

The main suspect was nabbed in Italy with 70,000 euros (AU$110,000) on him and large quantities of paedophilic materials.

Italian police arrested him while he was trying to leave for Ukraine, where he has two homes -- and where the vast majority of the victims are from.

Often young girls aged nine to 16, the victims were lured into a Ukrainian studio where photo shoots would become increasingly explicit and end with the victims being sexually abused, the investigation found.

Europol said 21 of the 23 victims were from Ukraine.

The other two were Belgian girls whose father forced them to take sexually explicit pictures. He was arrested last year.

The network's 2,500 clients could access 1.5 million paedophilic images by Internet, the inquiry showed. Some figured among those arrested, Eurojust official Michele Coninsx said.

"Customers come from all layers of society -- lawyers, school teachers, students, people with no jobs," Coninsx said.

The inquiry began a year ago, after Australian authorities alerted their Belgian counterparts of filmed images showing the rape of two Belgian girls.

Officials later tracked down the Italian producer and found he offered 30-minute to hour-long pornographic movies, among other services, to Internet clients worldwide.

"To fill the gap between the 2,500 clients and 92 arrests is a matter of time," Eurojust's Kennedy said.

The findings were announced as paedophilia topped the agenda of a separate, four-day Interpol meeting that began today in Morocco.

© 2007 Australian Associated Press Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

The Google phone: Has a wireless upheaval begun?

Computerworld Matt Hamblen

31/10/2007 09:11:17 The Google phone is inching closer to reality, with wireless handhelds running Google applications and operating software expected in the first half of 2008, several industry analysts said this week.

Some see Google's model as revolutionary in the U.S., where nearly all customers buy their mobile phones from a wireless carrier and are locked into a contract with that carrier. But Google's entry could signal a more open system where a customer buys the Google phone and then chooses a carrier, they noted.

The Wall Street Journal today cited unnamed sources and said that Google is expected to announce software within two weeks that would run on hardware from other vendors. The Google phone is expected to be available by mid-2008. The company did not comment.

Last week at the semiannual CTIA show in San Francisco, several analysts said they had heard rumors that Google would be offering software to Taiwan-based device maker High Tech Computer (HTC) for the Google phone.

Today, Gartner analysts Phillip Redman said the rumor was still that the Google phone "is coming from HTC for next year, [with] 50,000 devices initially."

HTC could not be reached for immediate comment.

Lewis Ward, an analyst at market research company IDC, said Google is clearly working on software for a phone, but after making a presentation at CTIA on emerging markets last week, he said, "It didn't sound like it was on HTC after all."

Unlike several analysts who said that Google could face a fight from carriers opposed to open networks and open devices, Ward and Redman said some carriers will cooperate with Google. "It's possible some carriers will work with Google," Ward said. "AT&T seems to be more open already with its iPhone support and other things, while T-Mobile and Sprint Nextel may be more open than Verizon Wireless."

Redman said that Google's "brand is attractive, so I think there will be takers" for building hardware and for providing network support.

At CTIA, Ward said a Google phone would make a wireless portal out of what Google already provides on a wired network to a PC, such as maps, social networking and even video sharing.

"This is about Google as a portal," Ward said last week. "This is fundamentally about wireless and wire-line converging."

Ward said Google's plans for its phone software are still up in the air. "What's unclear also is whether it will be a Linux free and open [operating system] running on top of the hardware, with applets and widgets and search and all the advanced stuff that Google has done in the past."

Jeffrey Kagan, an independent wireless analyst, said many questions are raised by Google's proposition, including what the phone could be named. "Will it be a regular phone, or will it be more like the Apple iPhone? How will customers pay for it? Will it be different from the traditional way we use and pay for wireless phones? There are so many questions," Kagan said.

Like Apple with the iPhone, "Google could be very successful if they crack the code." Kagan added. "The cell phone industry ... is going through enormous change and expansion. Many ideas will be tried. Some will work, and some will fail."

Computerworld Buyer's Guide

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Australia to wait till December for Skype 3 mobile...

Software - ZDNet Australia

30 October 2007 10:49 AM Skype and mobile phone group 3 will launch a 3G mobile phone in Australia in December, which will allow Skype users to make free Internet calls to each other while on the move.

The companies said today the new 3 Skypephone could also send free Skype instant messages, and that they hoped to sell "several hundred thousand" units worldwide in the fourth quarter of this year.

In the UK, the phone will be available at the end of this week for the equivalent of about AU$120. Local pricing has not yet been announced and a Skype spokesperson told ZDNet Australia that the handset is unlikely to be available in Australia till December.

"We are optimistic that if you look at one or two years, (we will sell) millions rather than hundreds of thousands, but in the fourth quarter (2007) we are looking at several hundred thousand worldwide," Frank Sixt, finance director of 3-owner Hutchison Whampoa, told reporters.

The phone is being launched in nine markets including Australia, Britain and Italy, with a roll-out into other countries under consideration.

Sixt said the phone's non-Skype tariffs were the same as on its other phones, with call minutes and texts priced the same way, and the phone will have a special Skype button.

"Skype is now truly mobile. This new handset lets you make free mobile Skype calls when you are on the move to other Skype users all over the world," Skype acting CEO Michael van Swaaij said in a statement.

He added on a conference call that he expected the launch to boost the group's 246 million-strong registered user base, as the service was now available to people without computers.

"We think there will be significant interest from those who aren't on Skype as it is so easy to set up. You don't have to have a laptop," he added.

Skype was bought by EBay for up to US$4.3 billion in 2005 as the online auction site gambled on the fast-growing popularity of the Web-based call service, although it wrote down US$1.2 billion from the value at the start of this month.

Munir Kotadia contributed to this story.

Photos: Airbus A380 lands in Sydney...

ZDNet Australia Luke Anderson, ZDNet Australia

26 October 2007 05:25 PM. Singapore Airlines, the first carrier to take ownership of the world's largest passenger jet, the Airbus A380, has flown its inaugural commercial flight from Singapore to Sydney.

ZDNet Australia visited Sydney Airport to see what customers can expect from what's been dubbed the "big fella" by air traffic controllers.

Singapore took delivery of its first A380-800 aircraft on 15 October at Airbus' headquarters in Toulouse, France. The second, third and fourth planes will be delivered between January, February and April 2008, respectively. They are planned to be used on Singapore to London flights.

The A380 is a massive aircraft. With a wingspan of 79.8m, 72 cars could park on each of them. The plane also measures 73m long and 24.1m high.

Credit: Airbus

Friday, October 26, 2007

Mystery of RealPlayer exploit, hijacked ad server unfolds...

Computerworld By Ellen Messmer (Network World)

26/10/2007. A week after Symantec security researchers traced the elaborate course of a malware exploit -- apparently devised in the Netherlands -- to what may be a compromised ad server belonging to Internet advertising company 24/7 Real Media, the attack method isn't fully understood.

The investigation started publicly late last week when Symantec issued a 10-page DeepSight Threat Management System Threat Analysis written by Aaron Adams, Raymond Ball and Anthony Roe. The report accurately detailed the discovery of a zero-day attack based on a buffer overflow vulnerability in an ActiveX control in the popular desktop media player, RealPlayer from RealNetworks.

"It's an ActiveX vulnerability, and this RealPlayer exploit runs JavaScript," said Oliver Friedrichs, director of Symantec's security response division. "The ActiveX control allows the malicious code to run, and it downloads a Trojan, one called Zonebac, which can disable security applications, modify the registry and perhaps later download more code. Just having RealPlayer on the desktop was enough."

Its seriousness was understood well enough that the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team issued a national security advisory this week about it, RealNetworks issued a patch to fix RealPlayer, and Symantec updated its desktop products to shield against the exploit on unpatched computers. Nevertheless, an aura of mystery still surrounds what role 24/7 Real Media's ad-serving network inadvertently may have played in the RealPlayer ActiveX exploit being disseminated across the Internet.

When Symantec researchers looked at logs and other data accumulated through its DeepSight honeypot network, they traced the path of the exploit back to 24/7 Real Media.

"What's most interesting about the exploit is where it is hosted," the Symantec researchers stated in their report. "The exploit itself is embedded in advertisements that were being served by 247realmedia.com. The redirection to the exploit page '83.149.65.105' was accomplished through an IFrame embedded in each advertisement."

According to the researchers, the iFrame in the Web ads silently loads an exploit located elsewhere on the Internet into victims' browsers without their knowledge. "This is a dangerous compromise in and of itself, however, the overall severity of the attack is revealed when the maze of URLs that lead to this advertisement is explored," they stated..

Symantec's report stated that the Web site Tripod.com was one place an ad could be found last week triggering the exploit. As far as the ultimate source of the payload, Symantec's report stated it was still being analyzed, but researchers were certain it was downloading and executing a file from a newagetimes.am in the Netherlands, owned by an Amsterdam-based company.

The Trojan itself left on a victim's machine is probably the least exciting aspect of the malware distribution design, says Friedrichs, who says Zonebac is an older, well-known piece of malware. "The Trojan itself is not sophisticated, though it can disable security applications and modifies the registry."

While it's not known precisely why the attacker went through so much trouble to craft this complex a zero-day attack, it may have been simply to spread a spam relay. The larger mystery that remains a week later is how 24/7 Real Media's ads may have been a carrier or not.

24/7 Real Media says it's working with Symantec now to try to understand what happened. While Symantec's report originally stated the 24/7 Real Media ad server was compromised, Friedrichs says it's possible the exploit may have been carried out by someone paying for a Web ad that was tainted and purposely designed to play a role in the attack method.

"It looks like something occurred," said a 24/7 Real Media spokesman. "How it worked is the big question. We're working closely with Symantec to figure out what happened." The spokesman said 24/7 Real Media isn't completely sure its own ad-serving operations played any role at all but is making an effort to determine that.

In the DeepSight research report, Symantec says it sees evidence the exploit perpetrated by the attackers may have extended over the past year.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Well, you don't see something like this every day...

Reuters

Wed Oct 24 2007. CANBERRA (Reuters) - An Australian barmaid has been fined for crushing beer cans between her bare breasts while an off-duty colleague has been fined for hanging spoons from her friend's nipples, police said Wednesday.

Police in Western Australia said the 31-year old barmaid pleaded guilty in the local magistrate's court to twice exposing her breasts to patrons at the Premier Hotel in Pinjarra, south of the state capital, Perth.

The woman "is alleged to have also crushed beer cans between her breasts during one of the offences," in breach of hotel licensing laws, police from the Peel district of Western Australia said in a statement.

The barmaid and the hotel manager were both fined A$1,000 ($900), while an off-duty barmaid was fined A$500 for helping to hang spoons from the woman's nipples, police said.

"It sends a clear message to all licensees in Peel that we will not tolerate this type of
behavior in our licensed premises," local police superintendent David Parkinson said.

Microsoft pays $240 million for Facebook stake...

Reuters

Wed Oct 24, 2007 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp said on Wednesday it would pay $240 million for a minority equity stake in Facebook in a deal that values the social networking Web site at $15 billion.

The world's largest software maker was bidding against Google Inc. for a stake in Facebook and the right to sell advertising for Facebook outside of the United States.

Microsoft said it would be the exclusive third-party advertising platform for Facebook, one of the hottest properties on the Internet with more than 47 million users.

(Reporting by Daisuke Wakabayashi

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

BigPond, portable wireless users 'most unhappy...

News - Communications - ZDNet Australia By Jo Best, ZDNet Australia

22 October 2007 02:55 PMTelstra user? Chances are you're the most unhappy with your ISP, according to a survey of over 3,000 Australian Internet users.

The research by Choice magazine found satisfaction among subscribers has plummeted since the last survey, conducted two years ago.

Today, 41 percent of users claimed they were satisfied with their Internet connection, compared to 29 percent for the last survey.

Choice found that users of Telstra's BigPond service are most likely to be fairly dissatisfied with the cost of their account, whether they connect over ADSL, ADSL2+ or cable.

By contrast, users of smaller ISPs are more likely to have better satisfaction ratings, with Internode leading the pack for ADSL2+ and Westnet, Internode, Chariot Netconnect, Netspace and AAPT reporting "very satisfied" customers in the ADSL category.

The survey also found that those on "higher speed" connections afforded by ADSL2 and ADSL2+ are more likely to be satisfied with their Internet access both in terms of speed and cost.

Of all the access technologies surveyed by Choice, users on portable wireless plans are the most likely to be displeased with their service, particularly on grounds of speed.

Trouw, Voorpagina

Trouw, Voorpagina

23 oktober 2007. Volgens mij wordt het zo langzamerhand kinderbedtijd.” Zo besloot dominee Deodaat van der Boon, predikant van de Dorpskerk Wassenaar, de doopplechtigheid van de op 10 april geboren prinses Ariane, derde dochter van erfprins Willem-Alexander en prinses Máxima.

De kerk, gevuld met 850 genodigden – burgemeesters, commissarissen der koningin, geestelijke leiders zoals kardinaal Simonis, familieleden, vrienden, premier Balkenende en minister Rouvoet – had zich in het halfuur daarvoor vermaakt met de capriolen van prinsesjes, graafjes en gravinnetjes: neefjes en nichtjes van de dopeling en een paar kinderen van vrienden van Máxima en Willem-Alexander.

Ze werden – na het binnendragen van Ariane door Inés Zorreguieta, de zus van Máxima en meter bij de doop – geacht plaats te nemen op rode kussentjes op de trappen van het koor, maar daar kwam hooguit even iets van terecht. Leuker was het om rond te rennen, bloempjes te plukken van de bloemstukken, elkaar met kussens om de oren te slaan of, zoals Ariane’s oudere zusjes Amalia en Alexia deden, aan de toga van de dominee te trekken.

Ariane werd, net als eerder haar zusjes, gedoopt met water uit de rivier de Jordaan, meegebracht door vrienden van Willem-Alexander en Máxima. Terwijl zonnestralen op de doopvont vielen en de dominee het water over haar hoofd sprenkelde, moest Ariane hard huilen. „Gezegend je mond, dat die lachen mag”, wenste de dominee haar toe. Daarna werd ze weer rustig.

Guillaume, erfgroothertog van Luxemburg, was een van de peters. Hij was de enige vertegenwoordiger van de Europese vorstenhuizen. Bij de doop van de twee eerste kinderen van het prinsenpaar waren de andere koningshuizen nog wel volop van de partij.

Naarmate een koninklijke telg lager staat in de rangorde van erfopvolging – Ariane is vierde na haar vader en twee zusjes – neemt kennelijk de status van zo’n doopplechtigheid af. De koninklijke familie was zelf ook niet compleet. Zo ontbrak een aantal vertegenwoordigers van de Apeldoornse tak.

Dominee Van der Boon hing zijn overdenking op aan ’De doop van de kamerling’, een schilderij van Rembrandt dat in de kerk tentoon werd gesteld, in bruikleen van het museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht. Máxima hield het niet droog toen Van der Boon haar drie kinderen ’drie klassedochters’ noemde, ’een drie sterren-stel, uw A-team’.

Bij aankomst en vertrek van de koninklijke stoet zorgde een kleine, maar felle groep demonstranten aan de overkant van de straat voor een pijnlijk moment. ’Zorreguieta moordenaar’, riepen ze, omdat de vader van Máxima, aanwezig bij de doop, ooit deel uitmaakte van een moorddadig militair regime in Argentinië Volgens een van de actievoerders heeft Zorreguieta hun kreet zeker gehoord. Hoe dan ook: „Maxima keek even in onze richting.”

Brits less popular after Europeans get to know them...

Reuters

Fri Oct 19, 2007 BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A poll of Europeans showed people of different nationalities liked each other more after getting to know each other, except in the case of the British -- who became less popular.

A project organized by the Notre Europe think tank brought together 362 citizens from 27 EU states for two days of deliberations in Brussels last weekend.

They were asked their views on a range of issues before and after the event, including how much they liked or disliked German, French, Polish, Italian, British and Spanish people.

The Spaniards were most popular with 78.6 percent approval at the end of the weekend. The Poles the least with 67 percent.

But all nationalities gained in popularity, bar the British who went from a 70.3 percent approval rating at the start of the weekend to 68.1 percent by the end.

Professor James Fishkin of Stanford University in the United States, who developed the polling technique used, urged some caution about the findings.

"I would be careful about drawing too much inference about people disliking the British -- it's small and not significant, but you know, it is what it is, and it did happen that way."

Fishkin said he did not think France's defeat by England in the rugby World Cup semi-final in between the two polls had had an influence, even though the number of French participants in the survey was disproportionately high.

© Reuters2007All rights reserved

Monday, October 22, 2007

Alabama's fierce death row battle...

BBC NEWS By Matt Wells

<--- Thomas Arthur came within hours of being executed last month.

Sunday, 21 October 2007, 11:10 GMT 12:10 UK If most politicians in Alabama had their way, Tommy Arthur would have been executed more than 20 years ago.

The 65-year-old, whose death sentence was overturned twice before a third jury convicted him in the early 1990s, is alive on the state's death row - but only just.

Although no physical evidence placed him at the scene, he was convicted of shooting Troy Wicker in his bed after being paid $10,000 by the victim's wife, with whom he had had an affair.

The twists and turns of the case, and the tangled relationships involved, are worthy of a grim detective novel. But ultimately the jury, and state law, dictated Arthur should die.

He missed his last appointment with a lethal-injection syringe by only a few hours at the end of last month.

Alabama's governor has made it clear he wants Arthur to die as soon as possible, and that the current furore over the chemicals used to deliver the ultimate punishment is an annoying distraction.

Although many death penalty abolitionists are viewing the US Supreme Court's decision to review the constitutionality of the existing chemical cocktail with hope, the fact is that states like Alabama guard their rights very carefully - and few more so than the right to execution.

'I want justice'

The founder of Alabama victims' rights group VOCAL (Victims of Crime and Leniency), Miriam Shenane, is more than just irritated by Arthur's latest stay of execution.

Putting them to death, even with the electric chair, is not nearly as horrible as what they did to my daughter

She says the governor has traumatised the victim's family, and others all over the state.

"What do we have to do? Put a mask over them and just take away their oxygen? I want justice," she said, in her office in the state capital, Montgomery.

The white walls are covered in photographs of "angels" - the word she uses to describe all the innocent people who have been murdered in Alabama.

Her own daughter was raped and murdered by three men, one of whom has been executed.

She would feel much better if the other two followed him. "Putting them to death, even with the electric chair, is not nearly as horrible as what they did to my daughter."

'Murder my father'

Tommy Arthur's daughter, Sherrie Arthur Stone, was still a teenager when her father was first sentenced to death.

Sherrie Arthur Stone believes DNA evidence would clear her father

For years, she thought he was probably guilty, and deserved the jail time he spent earlier in his life.

But now she is convinced of his innocence, fuelled largely by her disillusionment with a judicial system she views as callous and incompetent in Alabama.

Articulate and earnest, but clearly scarred by years of legal and emotional battle, she stopped living in the state a long time ago.

"I was basically told by investigators, if I didn't leave the state, I'd be found dead on a back road," she told the BBC.

"They clearly want to murder my father, which is what this is going to be. It's not going to be an execution, it's going to be a murder."

Amnesty International supports her argument that DNA testing of the evidence - which has yet to take place - could exonerate Arthur.

Tool of justice

The state is equally adamant that they will not allow that to happen - even if Arthur's family pays for the DNA testing.

Clay Crenshaw believes there have been no miscarriages of justice

"There have been three federal judges now... they have all agreed that the results of DNA testing would not show that Arthur is innocent," said Clay Crenshaw, Alabama's deputy attorney general in charge of capital cases.

It might strike many as a paradox, but Mr Crenshaw believes that in a culture that values human life above all, the right to take that life away is an essential tool of justice.

"The reason to have the death penalty is to keep those people who commit these violent acts off of the street, and hopefully prevent other people from committing those type of crimes," he added.

He believes that the unofficial moratorium on executions in many states over the lethal injection issue is not the beginning of the end for the death penalty in states like Alabama.

"To me it appears the opposite is happening," he said, arguing that states that make use of the death penalty are determined to cling on to it by whatever means necessary.

Historic injustice

Less than a mile from the rather shabby state government buildings in downtown Montgomery is the office of the Equal Justice Initiative, which is home to a clutch of lawyers who are determined to close death row down.

Some death penalty critics say it is tied to a history of racial injustice

Executive director Bryan Stephenson says the entire prosecutorial system in his home state is riddled with incompetence and not-so-latent racism, that perpetuates an historic injustice between black and white in the entire Deep South.

Sitting on top of that system is the death penalty, he says.

"It's impossible to disconnect that history from this punishment," says the young black professor, who teaches for part of the week in New York.

"We've had, in Alabama, 25 cases reversed after proving intentional racial discrimination in jury selection... We have 19 appellate court judges in Alabama, all of whom are white."

Mr Crenshaw denies all of the charges levelled at the system he represents, and believes that no miscarriages of justice have occurred in any of the state's death row cases.

Mr Stephenson says politicians and officials are in denial - and that there is a larger price to pay.

"Alabama wants to be the place where every European business comes to invest, and build their companies and factories, but we have an horrific human rights record."

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Biggetjes

Bron: Nu.nl

Een dierentuin in Thailand heeft een groepje biggen getraind om door een ring van vuur te springen. De biggen werden twaalf weken lang klaargestoomd voor hun hete stunt.

Thursday, October 04, 2007

Scientist invents computer piltop snoring...

Technology Reuters.com

Wed Oct 3, 2007. BERLIN (Reuters) - A German scientist has come up with a solution for snoring -- a computerized pillow that shifts the head's sleeping position until the noise stops.

Daryoush Bazargani, professor of computer science at the University of Rostock and the pillow's inventor, was displaying a prototype of his pillow at a health conference in Germany on Wednesday.

"The pillow is attached to a computer, which is the size of a book, rests on a bedside table, and analyses snoring noises," Bazargani told Reuters.

"The computer then reduces or enlarges air compartments within the pillow to facilitate nasal airflow to minimize snoring as the user shifts during sleep," he said.

The ergonomic pillow can also be used for neck massages.

Bazargani said several U.S. firms were interested in manufacturing the pillow.

"I invented it because I snore," he said. "I tried all sorts of products, but nothing worked. I hope people who use it will sleep more peacefully."

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.

Canada to criminalize identity theft....

Tech News on ZDNet

Oct 3, 2007 The Canadian government plans to criminalize identity theft to give police the ability to stop such activity before any fraud has actually been carried out, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said Tuesday.

He said he would introduce legislation targeting the actual gathering and trafficking in credit card, banking and other personal data for the purposes of using it deceptively.

Identity fraud is already a crime in Canada, but gathering and trafficking in identity information generally is not. "Our government will be giving police the tools to better protect Canadians by stopping identity theft activity before the damage is done," Nicholson said in a statement.

The misuse of such information can ruin a person's credit rating and reputation. Banks and credit card companies can be on the hook for fraud, and taxpayers can also end up paying if pensions or other government benefits are fraudulently drawn.

Story Copyright © 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

I'd like a car loan and 20 condoms, please...!

Reuters.com

Wed Oct 3, 2007 BANGKOK (Reuters Life!) - A Thai bank is pitching into the battle against HIV/AIDS and handing out condoms to customers too shy to get them at the shop.

Despite Bangkok's reputation as one of the world's sex industry centers, Thailand is a generally conservative country.

Kasikorn Bank launched the "Condoms for Confidence" campaign at 600 branches nationwide and said it would start giving out the sheaths, branded K-Condom and K-Excellence, later this month.

"HIV/AIDS is returning to Thailand since the government awareness campaign started 20 years ago has fizzled out," said a bank spokesman who declined to be identified.

"We want the teenagers to be aware of the problem."

Despite a tenfold plunge of overall new HIV/AIDS cases from 15 years ago, the health ministry has said it was concerned about the numbers of teenagers and homosexuals still being infected.

Disease Control Department chief Thawat Suntrajarn said embarrassment about buying condoms and ignorance in using them were the main causes of the new cases.

Research papers from all sorts of agencies have a consensus that many condom users are embarrassed to buy condoms from counters," Thawat told Reuters.

"Women who buy condoms from convenience stores always get a strange look from people, so condom handouts are a good way to avoid such embarrassment."

New HIV/AIDS cases in Thailand, once praised by international health agencies for its aggressive campaign to tackle the epidemic, had fallen to 13,000 in 2006 from more than 100,000 a year in early 1990s, Thawat said.

But the worrying sign was that many of the new patients were teenagers and homosexual men, not heterosexual men in their 30s and prostitutes as in the past, he added.

A Health Ministry-commissioned survey last year showed 48 percent of 5,712 male high school students used condoms.

About 43 percent of 7,712 female high school students said their sex partners used condoms, it said.

Spurred by the findings, Thawat's department is running a television advertisement encouraging people to buy condoms despite criticism from conservatives who argue it encourages teenagers to be sexually active.

"Even those bank customers who don't need to use the condoms, they can pass them on to their families or friends," he said.

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Not all types of fat are harmful...

Reuters

Tue Oct 2, 2007. HONG KONG (Reuters) - While it has long been held that too much fat in the liver may result in diabetes, researchers appear to have discovered that not all types of fat are harmful.

Writing in the latest issue of Nature Medicine, a group of Japanese scientists described how they changed the fat composition in the livers of mutant mice and fed them exactly the same rich, fatty diet as other mice.

But while all the rodents became obese and the normal mice developed resistance to insulin and became prone to diabetes, the mutant group was free from those problems.

"Obesity is a matter of quantity of fats in the body, but it is our new message that the quality of fats could be a new determinant factor for diabetes," said Hitoshi Shimano of the Department of Internal Medicine at the Graduate School of Comprehensive Human Sciences.

Excessive fat intake leads to obesity and overwhelms the storage capacity of fat cells, with surplus fat being stored in the liver. Development of fatty liver can result in insulin resistance and increased glucose levels -- hallmarks of diabetes.

"The absolute levels of fat in the liver do not therefore seem to be detrimental to maintaining normal glucose levels. Instead, the types of fat that are present seem to be a more important factor, with shorter fat molecules being healthier than longer ones," the researchers wrote.

OBESE BUT NOT DIABETIC

Shimano and his colleagues created a batch of mice lacking Elovl6, an enzyme that increases the length of the carbon chains of fatty acids.

That changed the fat composition in the liver of these mutant, or knock-out (KO) mice, which ended up with more short fatty acids than longer chains.

"Unlike normal mice that became insulin resistant and prone to diabetes after they became obese, the KO mice were free from insulin resistance and diabetes. In other words, we made mice that did not become diabetic even after they became obese."

Shimano held out hope that drugs could be made to inhibit this enzyme in people and change the fat composition in their livers so that the risk of diabetes could be reduced for those who are obese and who find it hard to lose weight.

"If what we found in these mice is applicable to humans, a drug that inhibits this enzyme could be a miracle anti-diabetic drug that does not require diet," Shimano wrote.

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Once-puritan South Africa holds its first sex fair...

Reuters.com

Mon Oct 1, 2007. JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africans queued to learn about sex toys and pole-dancing this weekend, at the first sex fair ever held in a country founded by conservative Christians and still home to many sexual taboos.

<--Artist Tim Patch (L), who calls himself 'Pricasso', paints a picture of Olga Braude (R) using his penis at the Sexpo in Johannesburg, September 28, 2007. Patch has painted portraits of some of the worlds most famous people including George Bush and Queen of England. REUTERS/Antony Kaminju

The exhibition, modeled on a show running in Australia since 1996, would have been unthinkable 15 years ago when South Africa was still ruled by Afrikaners, the white descendants of the original, largely Puritan Dutch and French settlers.

During the apartheid era, customs officials not only confiscated pornography brought from abroad by travelers, but sometimes detained those trying to import it. Strip clubs did not exist and handcuffs, though abundant, were not fur-lined.

The end of white minority rule in 1994 and the establishment of a new constitution -- generally considered one of the most liberal in the world -- unleashed a torrent of hard-core porn. Sex shops and strip clubs blossomed.

Although authorities tolerate the lifestyle, it remains one that few South Africans openly discuss or admit to supporting.

Meanwhile, South Africa has one of the world's worst AIDS epidemics.

An estimated 12 percent of its 47 million people are infected with HIV, most of them black. Sex is the main channel of transmission in a culture where male dominance is rarely challenged and promiscuity often tolerated.

Each day about 1,000 people die from AIDS and another 1,500 contract the virus.

Amid the racy lingerie, pornographic DVDs and exotic sex toys, the Johannesburg "Sexpo SA" made room for a handful of health advocacy groups to set up stands, including the LoveLife Trust, the national HIV prevention program for young people.

Silas Howarth, the 28-year-old South African who organized the exhibition, said around 40,000 people paid the 89 rand ($13) admission to the fair. He said there were plans to hold similar events in coming months in Durban and Cape Town.

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.

Friday, September 28, 2007

Lover to die for kiss-and-kill pill...

Thu Sep 27, 2007. SHANGHAI (Reuters) - A Chinese woman who killed her lover with a rat poison-laced kiss when she suspected him of being unfaithful has been sentenced to death, a newspaper said Thursday.

Xia Xinfeng, from Maolou in the central province of Henan, passed a capsule with rat poison from her mouth to her long-time lover, Mao Ansheng, during a kiss, the Shanghai Daily said.
Mao swallowed the capsule and died soon afterwards.

"The couple had said that if either one of them cheated on the other, he or she would have to die," the paper said in explaining the mouth-to-mouth assault.

Xia found Mao had been "talking" with another woman and deemed that he had broken their promise.

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.

China bans "sexual sounds" on airwaves | Oddly Enough | Reuters.com

Reuters.com

Wed Sep 26, 2007. BEIJING (Reuters) - China has banned "sexually provocative sounds" on television and pulled the plug on a show reconstructing infamous crimes by women ahead of a major Communist Party meeting next month.

The order, issued by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, is the latest in a raft of measures which have included axing reality shows featuring sex changes and plastic surgery and banning talent contests during prime-time.

"Sexually suggestive advertisements and scenes showing how women are influenced into a life of crime are detrimental to society," it said in a statement posted on its Web site on Wednesday, referring to its decision to axe "Red Question Mark," a crime documentary.

"Commercials containing sexually provocative sounds or tantalizing language as well as vulgar advertisements for breast enhancement and female underwear are banned, effective immediately," said the SARFT notice.

The watchdog also ordered an end to programs with titles including the names of "sex-related drugs, products or medical institutions."

A total of 1,466 advertisements worth 2 billion yuan ($246 million) in revenues had been stripped from China's airways since August, SARFT said, citing department statistics.

Since launching a campaign to purify China's state-controlled airways earlier in the year, the media watchdog's edicts have gained fever pitch in recent weeks, ahead of a meeting of the 17th Party congress, a sensitive five-yearly meeting at which key government leaders are appointed and national policy set for the next few years.

It earlier urged the country's increasingly freewheeling broadcasters to forgo vulgarity and bad taste in the pursuit of ratings in favor of providing "inspiring" content for the masses imbued with "socialist" values.

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.

Friday, September 21, 2007

Bill Gates makes US$115m a week, tops rich list:...

Software - ZDNet Australia By:Michelle Nichols, AAP

21 September 2007 Microsoft founder Bill Gates is the richest person in America for the 14th year in a row, with Oracle chief Larry Ellison at number four and Google's founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page in fifth place.

Bill Gates fortune grew by US$6 billion in the past year (aprox US$115 million a week), according to Forbes. Second on the list was investor Warren Buffet -- who has pledged 85 percent of his net worth to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and family charities -- is worth US$52 billion.

Michael Dell, chief executive of Dell Inc, the world's second-largest PC maker, was number eight on the list with a fortune of US$17.2 billion.

Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson (US$28 billion), head of Las Vegas Sands Corp, and software tycoon Larry Ellison (US$26 billion), chief executive of Oracle Corp, remain at third and fourth on the 25th annual ranking of 400 rich Americans, which now requires a minimum net worth of US$1.3 billion for inclusion.

"The collective net worth of those listed on the 400 this year rose US$290 billion to US$1.54 trillion," Forbes said. "Despite market jitters, nearly half of the 45 new members come from hedge fund and private equity investments."

For the first time since 1989 there are no members of the Walton family, descendants of Wal-Mart Stores Inc founder Sam Walton, in the top 10. Four members -- Jim, Christy, Robson and Alice -- slipped to 12th and 15th place.

The Waltons were displaced by Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who came in at number five with fortunes of US$18.5 billion, and brothers Charles and David Koch, who run Koch Industries, the world's second largest private company, and are each valued at US$17 billion, earning them 9th place.

Investor Kirk Kerkorian was the biggest gainer on the list, his fortune rising by more than US$9 billion in the past year to US$18 billion. He debuted in the top 10 at No 7 - up from No 26 last year.

Of the top 400 richest Americans, Forbes said 270 were entirely self-made, 74 inherited their wealth and 39 are women. There were 82 American billionaires who did not make the list.

The youngest member, and new to the list, is 33-year-old hedge fund manager John Arnold, who came in at number 317 with a US$1.5 billion wealth, while the oldest is 98-year-old John Simplot, valued at US$3.6 billion and 214th on the list.

Man hides sex toys in the wurst way... 

Reuters.com

Wed Sep 19, 2007 BERLIN (Reuters) - Staff at a German butcher's shop were shocked to discover a customer had hidden two sex toys in their sausages for transport to Dubai, police said Wednesday.

"It was two latex dildos with a natural look," said a spokesman for police in the southwestern city of Mannheim.

After shopping there earlier in the day, the man, who spoke broken English, returned to the butcher's with two large "Schwartenmagen" sausages. He asked a shop assistant to wrap and cool them until he departed for Dubai the next day.

But the assistant noticed the goods had got heavier and alerted police. Officers discovered the man, who was about 50, had removed some of the meat and packed the dildos inside.

"He could have used a loaf of bread," the spokesman said. "It's not against the law here. But obviously I can't speculate on what customs in Dubai will have to say about it."

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.