world of technocrazy

Sell Windows 7 Professional 32 bit OEM Asia Pacific

noreply@blogger.com (Antok Suryaden) — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 21:56:22 PDT

Overview : Windows 7 Professional, fewer walls stand between you and your success. You can run many Windows XP productivity programs in Windows XP Mode and recover data easily with automatic backups to your home or business network. You can also connect to company networks effortlessly and more securely with Domain Join. With all the exciting entertainment features of Windows Home Premium, it’s a great choice for home and for business.

Detail Specifications

Features

Simplify your PC with new navigation features like Aero Shake, Jump Lists, and Snap.
Customize Windows to look and feel the way you like by changing themes and taskbar programs.
Easy to network (with or without a server).
Back up your complete system over a network.
Designed to make your PC sleep and resume quicker.
Takes full advantage of 64-bit PC hardware and memory.
Windows XP Mode gives you the business flexibility you need
Watch, pause, rewind, and record TV with Windows Media Center.
Watch your favorite DVD movies.
Includes integrated video and Dolby audio codecs.

License Type OEM System Builders, Media Type DVD, Compatibility PC Windows,
Pricing Scheme OEM, Min. License Quantity 1 user(s), Product type Standard, Min. Processor Speed 1 GHz or faster 32-bit (x86), Min. Harddisk Space 1 GB RAM (32-bit) Min. Memory Size, 16 GB available hard disk space, Min. Graphic Size DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

Price Rp. 1.300.000, (please comment below)

Quantum Leaps

noreply@blogger.com (Antok Suryaden) — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 17:39:29 PDT

Quantum Leaps - 100 Scientist Who Changed the World, a book by Jon Balchin. Published on 2004. It captured 100 brillian man and woman thinking. Changes they have been made for this world. So interesting and give a lot of understanding to look about this world, environment, our mind and body. This is a motivational and emotional books from west perspective about what they do and what they have been destroy our entire earth, environment or lives.

This optimism books just give information not an issue about what happen now. Impacts of 100 scientist that just think locally but by other power it be use for anything. Nobody knows, or nobody care about this perspective. Actually maybe the Indian people in America has many issues to solve many problem and disseases, eventualy right now maybe a whole new world with influenced with pestiside and antibiotics, the new ideas of healthy life is going back to normal natural life.

Actually the changes of this world is by war and technology. How about Linux, how about computers, how about energy, how about nuclear, how about Google. This are more than quantum leaps indeed. More about Galileo and Galilei, traditional science not in West just more think, they are more clever than Galileo. Actually this happen but not in hegemony of western science.

not about us

noreply@blogger.com (Antok Suryaden) — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 17:39:56 PDT

A little piece of something
Falling gently down down down
No one understands you like I do

I'd rather be beside you
Everything we know so well
Tell me what you feel now
Show me what you think of it

It's not about us anymore
It's all about the reasons
That we think we're fighting for
It's not about hate
It's not about pain we always feel
I know we have our problems
But we're not the only ones
It's not about you it's not about me
It's not about anger
It's more about the loneliness we feel

How can I begin to
Ask for some forgiveness
For all that we have taken
There's nothing left now

Just a little piece of something
Falling gently down down down
No one understands you no no
Like I do
There's nothing left now

It's not about us anymore
It's all about the reasons
That we think we're fighting for
It's not about hate
It's not about pain we always feel
I know we have our problems
But we're not the only ones
It's not about you it's not about me
It's not about anger
It's more about the loneliness we feel

It's not about us
It's not about hate
It's more about the loneliness we feel, can you feel it
It's not about anger
It's not about wanting
I know we have our problems
But we're not the only ones, we're not the only ones
It's not about you, it's not about me...

Bekasi Bersih Partisipasi Blogger

White Phosphorus Bomb

noreply@blogger.com (Antok Suryaden) — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 17:40:45 PDT

White phosphorus (WP) is a flare- and smoke-producing incendiary device or smoke-screening agent that is made from a common allotrope of the chemical element phosphorus. White phosphorus bombs and shells are incendiary weapons, but can also be used as offensive anti-personnel flame compounds capable of causing serious burns or death. The agent is used in bombs, artillery, and mortars, short-range missiles which burst into burning flakes of phosphorus upon impact. White phosphorus is commonly referred to in military jargon as "WP". The slang term "Willy(ie) Pete" or "Willy(ie) Peter", dating from World War I and common at least through the Vietnam War, is still occasionally heard.

White phosphorus weapons are controversial today because of their potential use against civilians. While the Chemical Weapons Convention does not designate WP as a chemical weapon, various groups consider it to be one. In recent years, the United States, Israel, and Russia have used white phosphorus in combat.

The U.S. use of white phosphorus in Iraq in the Iraq War has resulted in considerable controversy. Initial field reports referred to white phosphorus use against insurgents,but its use was officially denied until November 2005,[4] when the Department of Defense admitted to the use of white phosphorus while stating that its use for producing obscuring smoke is legal and does not violate the CWC. A DoD spokesman has also admitted that WP "was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants", though not against civilians.

Israel used White Phosphorus against HAMAS targets in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead in January 2009. This violated no international laws or conventions.

White Phosphorus (WP), known as Willy Pete, is used for signaling, screening, and incendiary purposes. White Phosphorus can be used to destroy the enemy's equipment or to limit his vision. It is used against vehicles, petroleum, oils and lubricants (POL) and ammunition storage areas, and enemy observers. WP can be used as an aid in target location and navigation. It is usually dispersed by explosive munitions. It can be fired with fuze time to obtain an airburst. White phosphorus was used most often during World War II in military formulations for smoke screens, marker shells, incendiaries, hand grenades, smoke markers, colored flares, and tracer bullets.

The Battle of Fallujah was conducted from 8 to 20 November 2004 with the last fire mission on 17 November. The battle was fought by an Army, Marine and Iraqi force of about 15,000 under the I Marine Expeditionary Force (IMEF). US forces found WP to be useful in the Battle of Fallujah. "WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE. We fired “shake and bake” missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out. ... We used improved WP for screening missions when HC smoke would have been more effective and saved our WP for lethal missions."

White phosphorus is not banned by any treaty to which the United States is a signatory. Smokes and obscurants comprise a category of materials that are not used militarily as direct chemical agents. The United States retains its ability to employ incendiaries to hold high-priority military targets at risk in a manner consistent with the principle of proportionality that governs the use of all weapons under existing law. The use of white phosphorus or fuel air explosives are not prohibited or restricted by Protocol II of the Certain Conventional Weapons Convention (CCWC), the Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons which may be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious or to have Indiscriminate Effects.

White Phosphorus (WP) - Incendiary

WP is a colorless to yellow translucent wax-like substance with a pungent, garlic-like smell. The form used by the military is highly energetic (active) and ignites once it is exposed to oxygen. White phosphorus is a pyrophoric material, that is, it is spontaneously flammable).

When exposed to air, it spontaneously ignites and is oxidized rapidly to phosphorus pentoxide. Such heat is produced by this reaction that the element bursts into a yellow flame and produces a dense white smoke. Phosphorus also becomes luminous in the dark, and this property is conveyed to "tracer bullets." This chemical reaction continues until either all the material is consumed or the element is deprived of oxygen. Up to 15 percent of the WP remains within the charred wedge and can reignite if the felt is crushed and the unburned WP is exposed to the atmosphere.

White phosphorus results in painful chemical burn injuries. The resultant burn typically appears as a necrotic area with a yellowish color and characteristic garliclike odor. White phosphorus is highly lipid soluble and as such, is believed to have rapid dermal penetration once particles are embedded under the skin. Because of its enhanced lipid solubility, many have believed that these injuries result in delayed wound healing. This has not been well studied; therefore, all that can be stated is that white phosphorus burns represent a small subsegment of chemical burns, all of which typically result in delayed wound healing.

Incandescent particles of WP may produce extensive burns. Phosphorus burns on the skin are deep and painful; a firm eschar is produced and is surrounded by vesiculation. The burns usually are multiple, deep, and variable in size. The solid in the eye produces severe injury. The particles continue to burn unless deprived of atmospheric oxygen. Contact with these particles can cause local burns. These weapons are particularly nasty because white phosphorus continues to burn until it disappears. If service members are hit by pieces of white phosphorus, it could burn right down to the bone. Burns usually are limited to areas of exposed skin (upper extremities, face). Burns frequently are second and third degree because of the rapid ignition and highly lipophilic properties of white phosphorus.

If burning particles of WP strike and stick to the clothing, take off the contaminated clothing quickly before the WP burns through to the skin. Remove quickly all clothing affected by phosphorus to prevent phosphorus burning through to skin. If this is impossible, plunge skin or clothing affected by phosphorus in cold water or moisten strongly to extinguish or prevent fire. Then immediately remove affected clothing and rinse affected skin areas with cold sodium bicarbonate solution or with cold water. Moisten skin and remove visible phosphorus (preferably under water) with squared object (knife-back etc.) or tweezers. Do not touch phosphorus with fingers! Throw removed phosphorus or clothing affected by phosphorus into water or allow to bum in suitable location. Cover phosphorus burns with moist dressing and keep moist to prevent renewed inflammation. It is neccessary to dress white phosphorus-injured patients with saline-soaked dressings to prevent reignition of the phosphorus by contact with the air.

Some nations recommend washing the skin with a 0.5-2.0% copper sulphate solution or a copper sulphate impregnated pad. Wounds may be rinsed with a 0.1%-0.2% copper sulphate solution, if available. Dark coloured deposits may be removed with forceps. Prevent prolonged contact of any copper sulphate preparations with the tissues by prompt, copious flushing with water or saline, as there is a definite danger of copper poisoning. It may be necessary to repeat the first aid measures to completely remove all phosphorus.

White Phosphorus (WP) - Smoke

White Phosphorus (WP) creates a smoke screen as it burns. Phosphorus smokes are generated by a variety of munitions. Some of these munitions such as the M825 (155-mm round) may, on explosion, distribute particles of incompletely oxidized white phosphorus.

Smokes obscure vision and are used to hide troops, equipment, and areas from detection. Smoke screens are essential for movement in city fighting. In the December 1994 battle for Grozny in Chechnya, every fourth or fifth Russian artillery or mortar round fired was a smoke or white phosphorus round.

White Phosphorus and Red Phosphorus burn to produce a hygroscopic smoke containing phosphoric acids. Red phosphorus (RP) is not nearly as reactive as white phosphorus. It reacts slowly with atmospheric moisture and the smoke does not produce thermal injury, hence the smoke is less toxic. The extinction for these smokes is primarily due to scattering in the visible and absorption in the infrared (IR). These smokes are composed of spherical liquid particles that grow with relative humidity to an equilibrium size by absorbing ambient moisture that depends on the ambient relative humidity. The mass extinction varies significantly with relative humidity.

The White Phosphorus flame produces a hot, dense white smoke composed of particles of phosphorus pentoxide, which are converted by moist air into phosphoric acid. This acid, depending on concentration and duration of exposure, may produce a variety of topically irritative injuries.

Most smokes are not hazardous in concentrations which are useful for obscuring purposes. However, any smoke can be hazardous to health if the concentration is sufficient or if the exposure is long enough. Medical personnel should be prepared to treat potential reactions to military smokes once such smokes have been introduced to the battlefield. Exposure to heavy smoke concentrations for extended periods (particularly if near the source of emission) may cause illness or even death.

Casualties from WP smoke have not occurred in combat operations. At room temperature, white phosphorus is somewhat volatile and may produce a toxic inhalational injury. In moist air, the phosphorus pentoxide produces phosphoric acid. This acid, depending on concentration and duration of exposure, may produce a variety of topically irritative injuries. Irritation of the eyes and irritation of the mucous membranes are the most commonly seen injuries. These complaints remit spontaneously with the soldier's removal from the exposure site. With intense exposures, a very explosive cough may occur, which renders gas mask adjustment difficult. There are no reported deaths resulting from exposure to phosphorus smokes. Generally, treatment of WP smoke irritation is unnecessary. Spontaneous recovery is rapid.

White phosphorus fume can cause severe eye irritation with blepharospasm, photophobia, and lacrimation. Irritation of the eyes and irritation of the mucous membranes are the most commonly seen injuries. These complaints remit spontaneously with the soldier's removal from the exposure site. The WP smoke irritates the eyes and nose in moderate concentrations. With intense exposures, a very explosive cough may occur, which renders gas mask adjustment difficult. There are no reported deaths resulting from exposure to phosphorus smokes.

White Phosphorus - Non-Military Applications

The amazing thing is that White Phosphorus is used in almost every product imaginable – from soft drinks to toothpaste. White phosphorus is used by industry to produce phosphoric acid and other chemicals for use in fertilizers, food additives, and cleaning compounds. Small amounts of white phosphorus were used in the past in pesticides and fireworks.

In recent years, concentrated phosphoric acids, which may contain as much as 70% to 75% P2O5 content, have become of great importance to agriculture and farm production. World-wide demand for fertilizers has caused record phosphate production. Phosphates are used in the production of special glasses, such as those used for sodium lamps.

Bone-ash, calcium phosphate, is used to create fine chinaware and to produce mono-calcium phosphate, used in baking powder. Phosphorus is also important in the production of steels, phosphor bronze, and many other products. Trisodium phosphate is important as a cleaning agent, as a water softener, and for preventing boiler scale and corrosion of pipes and boiler tubes.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and numerous state/local law enforcement authorities throughout the United States, have noted an alarming trend involving illicit methamphetamine production. Methamphetamine (AKA speed, crank or meth) is a major drug problem in the United States. All businesses engaged in the sale of red phosphorus, white phosphorus and hypophosphorous acid products should be aware of the use of these products by clandestine methamphetamine laboratory operators.

White Phosphorus - Background

Phosphorus is an element, the name derived from the Greek "phosphoros" or light bearing, the ancient name for the planet Venus when appearing before sunrise. Brand discovered phosphorus in 1669 by preparing it from urine. Phosphorus exists in four or more allotropic forms: white (or yellow), red, and black (or violet). Ordinary phosphorus is a waxy white solid; when pure it is colorless and transparent. White phosphorus has two modifications: alpha and beta with a transition temperature at -3.8oC. It is insoluble in water, but soluble in carbon disulfide.

Never found free in nature, Phosphorus is widely distributed in combination with minerals. Phosphate rock, which contains the mineral apatite, an impure tri-calcium phosphate, is an important source of the element. Large deposits are found in Russia, in Morocco, and in Florida, Tennessee, Utah, Idaho, and elsewhere.

White phosphorus may be made by several methods. By one process, tri-calcium phosphate, the essential ingredient of phosphate rock, is heated in the presence of carbon and silica in an electric furnace or fuelfired furnace. Elementary phosphorus is liberated as vapor and may be collected under phosphoric acid, an important compound in making super-phosphate fertilizers.

White Phosphorus (WP) - Other Health Effects

Systemic toxicity may occur if therapy is not administered. Therapy consists of topical use of a bicarbonate solution to neutralize phosphoric acids and mechanical removal and debridement of particles. A Wood’s lamp in a darkened room may help to identify remaining luminescent particles. The early signs of systemic intoxication by phosphorus are abdominal pain, jaundice, and a garlic odor of the breath; prolonged intake may cause anemia, as well as cachexia and necrosis of bone, involving typically the maxilla and mandible (phossy jaw). Prolonged absorption of phosphorus causes necrosis of bones. It is a hepatotoxin.

The presenting complaints of overexposed workers may be toothache and excessive salivation. There may be a dull red appearance of the oral mucosa. One or more teeth may loosen, with subsequent pain and swelling of the jaw; healing may be delayed following dental procedures such as extractions; with necrosis of bone, a sequestrum may develop with sinus tract formation. In a series of 10 cases, the shortest period of exposure to phosphorus fume (concentrations not measured) that led to bone necrosis was 10 months (two cases), and the longest period of exposure was 18 years.

Signs and symptoms include irritation of the eyes and the respiratory tract; abdominal pain, nausea, and jaundice; anemia, cachexia, pain, and loosening of teeth, excessive salivation, and pain and swelling of the jaw; skin and eye burns. Phossy jaw must be differentiated from other forms of osteomyelitis. With phossy jaw, a sequestrum forms in the bone and is released from weeks to months later; the sequestra are light in weight, yellow to brown, osteoporotic, and decalcified, whereas sequestra from acute staphylococcal osteomyelitis are sharp, white spicules of bone, dense and well calcified. In acute staphylococcal osteomyelitis, the radiographic picture changes rapidly and closely follows the clinical course, but with phossy jaw the diagnosis sometimes is clinically obvious before radiological changes are discernible. It is good dental practice to take routine X-ray films of jaws, but experience indicates that necrosis can occur in the absence of any pathology that is visible on the roentgenogram.

(http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/wp.htm)

Israel main battle tank, Merkava

noreply@blogger.com (Antok Suryaden) — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 17:42:07 PDT

The Merkava is the main battle tank of the Israel Defense Forces. Since the early 1980s, four main versions have been deployed. The "Merkava" name was derived from the IDF's development program name

This platform is optimized for crew survival and rapid battle damage repair. With the use of spaced-armor techniques and quick-replacement modular designs, the design team was able to incorporate a derivative of rolled homogeneous armor (RHA) and Chobham armour. Additionally, the space between the inner and outer hulls is filled with diesel fuel — an economical storage method and effective means of defeating HEAT rounds

Following the model of contemporary self-propelled howitzers, the turret assembly is located nearer the rear than in most main battle tanks. This gives the crew additional protection against a frontal attack by putting the engine between them and the front of the tank. This arrangement also creates an otherwise unused space in the rear of the tank that allows increased storage capacity, as well as a rear entrance to the main crew cabinet allowing easy access even under enemy fire. This allows the tank to be used as a platform for medical disembarkation, a forward command and control station, and an armoured personnel carrier. The rear entrance's clamshell-style doors provide overhead protection when off- and on-loading cargo and personnel.

It was reportedly decided shortly before the beginning of the 2006 Lebanon War that the Merkava line would be discontinued within 4 years.[2] However, on 7 November 2006, Haaretz reported that an Israeli General Staff assessment had ruled of the Merkava Mark IV that "if properly deployed, the tank can provide its crew with better protection than in the past," and deferred the decision on discontinuing the line

All photos: serkoff.narod.ru

Barack Obama the President

noreply@blogger.com (Antok Suryaden) — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 12:26:23 PST

Barack Obama Background
Hometown: Honolulu, Hawaii
Age: 47
Religion: United Church of Christ
Education: Harvard Law School, J.D., 1991, Columbia University, B.A., 1983
Candidate Website : www.barackobama.com
Candidacy Status: Formally declared candidacy Feb. 10, 2007, Elected president Nov. 4, 2008.
Political Experience: U.S. Senator from Illinois, 2005-present
Illinois State Senator, 1997-2004
Professional Experience: Lecturer, University of Chicago Law School, 1993-2004, Attorney, Miner Barnhill & Galland, 1993-2004
Family Information: Spouse: Michelle Obama, Children: Malia Ann Obama, Sasha Obama

Time Says:

"It is not clear that the economy's bottomed out," he begins, understatedly. (The morning newspaper trumpets the worst unemployment spike in more than 30 years.) "And so even if we take a whole host of the right steps in terms of the economy, two years from now it may not have fully recovered." That worries him. Also Afghanistan: "We're going to have to make a series of not just military but also diplomatic moves that fully enlist Pakistan as an ally in that region, that lessen tensions between India and Pakistan, and then get everybody focused on rooting out militancy in a terrain, a territory, that is very tough — and in an enormous country that is one of the poorest and least developed in the world. So that, I think, is going to be a very tough situation.

"And then the third thing that keeps me up at night is the issue of nuclear proliferation," Obama continues, sailing on through the horribles. "And then the final thing, just to round out my Happy List, is climate change. All the indicators are that this is happening faster than even the most pessimistic scientists were anticipating a couple of years ago."

Score that as follows: one imploding economy, one deteriorating war in an impossible region and two versions of Armageddon — the bang of loose nukes and the whimper of environmental collapse. That's just for starters; we'll hear the unabridged version shortly.

Economists.com says:

What chance success?

Mr Bush (see article) had a simplistic tendency to see the world through ideological and partisan spectacles. He hung on to bad advisers for longer than he should have; he divided the world too often into good and evil; and he plotted to establish a Republican hegemony although he had sold himself to the electorate as bipartisan. In economic matters, he was too prone to sacrifice the long-term good for short-term gain. He seemed curiously incurious about vital details, such as the conduct of the war in Iraq.

Mr Obama seems to be different. By offering the most prized cabinet job to his rival, Hillary Clinton, and by keeping on Robert Gates, the defence secretary, who has done a good job, Mr Obama has shown a determination not to surround himself with cronies. He has put together a team which has impressed almost everyone with its calibre and its centrism. He has been tough already, dispatching blunderers and being prepared to admit to mistakes. He has repeatedly warned Americans that he will have to do unpleasant things.

The next four, or eight, years may be a disappointment, a triumphant renewal or something in between. Mr Obama is inexperienced, and right now the world looks especially forbidding. But he is a respectful and thoughtful man, and that is a good start.

Pravda says:

The importance of improving U.S./Russia relations cannot be understated. Most commentators agree that Russia and the U.S. have vested interests in avoiding further antagonism. For this reason, the U.S. has maintained dialogue with Russia open even in moments of great crisis. For instance, during the Georgian aggression, top U.S. brass met with Russian generals to discuss security and related issues. Even in an election cycle which saw the Georgian war politicized, and under an administration which had little to lose by further alienating Russia, pragmatism trumped politics.

The new US administration should realize that Russia needs no more than to be treated as an equal in the global economy. In the past, America has had vibrant diplomatic relations with Russia--from the 1930s with American Ambassador Joseph Davies, to the height of the Cold War, and throughout the transition period. High-level talks are old hat for the U.S. and Russia; they also carry none of the political baggage Obama faced when discussing diplomatic talks with adversaries such as Iran without preconditions on the campaign trail.

Guardian says:

I had assumed that Krispy Kreme's plan to give a free doughnut to anyone visiting its US stores on inauguration day was just another of the countless commercial efforts to jump on the Obama bandwagon for financial gain. As the company explains: "[We are] honouring American's sense of pride and freedom of choice on Inauguration Day, by offering a free doughnut of choice to every customer on this historic day." (Brits can get a free coffee -- not a free doughnut -- by going into one of Krispy Kreme's UK locations and saying 'Yes we can', and thereby looking like a bit of a fool. The offer ends tomorrow.) But apparently it's much more sinister than that, according to an important and thoroughly persuasive press release from the American Life League, which campaigns against abortion, and also doughnuts:

Celebrating his inauguration with 'Freedom of Choice' doughnuts - only two days before the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision to decriminalize abortion - is not only extremely tacky, it's disrespectful and insensitive and makes a mockery of a national tragedy.

The press release is headlined "Krispy Kreme Celebrates Obama With Pro-Abortion Doughnuts", and the logic would seem to be that any reference to the word "choice" is automatically a reference to the issue of reproductive rights. However, there is a hole at the centre of this logic. [Miami New Times, via Wonkette]

Bloomberg Says:

For Barack Obama, the question is how long his honeymoon will endure and how much of his ambitious agenda he can achieve before it ends, perhaps -- if history is a guide -- as a result of his own actions.

“New presidents abort their own honeymoons,” said political analyst Charlie Cook. “There’s a residual goodwill that comes into office with them, and it stays with them until they end it by making mistakes.”

Presidential honeymoons provide Americans a first in-depth look at their newly elected leader while granting him a chance to set a tone and style that is likely to carry long-term consequences for the country and his presidency.

“First impressions tend to be lasting ones,” said Thomas Mann, a political analyst at the Brookings Institution, a research organization in Washington. “Mistakes made early can certainly weaken a president -- not necessarily destroy his presidency but slow him down.”

i am says:

Welcome Barack Obama, Never Give up...

cluster and nuclear bomb

noreply@blogger.com (Antok Suryaden) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:07:48 PST

Cluster munitions or cluster bombs are air-dropped or ground-launched munitions that eject smaller submunitions: a cluster of bomblets. The most common types are intended to kill enemy personnel and destroy vehicles. Submunition based weapons designed to destroy runways, electric power transmission lines, deliver chemical or biological weapons, or to scatter land mines have also been produced. Some submunition based weapons can disperse non-munition payloads, such as leaflets.

Because cluster bombs release many small bomblets over a wide area, unexploded bomblets can kill or maim civilians long after a conflict has ended. Unexploded submunitions are very costly to locate and remove.

Cluster bombs are prohibited under the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which was adopted in Dublin in May 2008 and signed by 94 nations on 3-4 December 2008 in Oslo. The general rules of international humanitarian law aimed at protecting civilians also apply to cluster bombs as they do to all weapons. (from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_bomb)

Nuclear Bomb

A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter; a modern thermonuclear weapon weighing little more than a thousand kilograms can produce an explosion comparable to the detonation of more than a billion kilograms of conventional high explosive.^[1] Even small nuclear devices can devastate a city. Nuclear weapons are considered weapons of mass destruction, and their use and control has been a major aspect of international policy since their debut.

In the history of warfare only two nuclear weapons have been detonated offensively, both near the end of World War II. The first was detonated on the morning of 6 August 1945, when the United States dropped a uranium gun-type device code-named "Little Boy" on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The second was detonated three days later when the United States dropped a plutonium implosion-type device code-named "Fat Man" on the city of Nagasaki, Japan. These bombings resulted in the immediate deaths of around 120,000 people (mostly civilians) from injuries sustained from the explosion and acute radiation sickness, and even more deaths from long-term effects of (ionizing) radiation. The use of these weapons was and remains controversial. (See Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for a full discussion.)

Since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, nuclear weapons have been detonated on over two thousand occasions for testing purposes and demonstration purposes. The only countries known to have detonated nuclear weapons – and that acknowledge possessing such weapons – are (chronologically) the United States, the Soviet Union (succeeded as a nuclear power by Russia), the United Kingdom, France, the People's Republic of China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea. Israel is also widely believed to possess nuclear weapons, though it does not acknowledge having them. For more information on these states' nuclear programs, as well as other states that formerly possessed nuclear weapons or are suspected of seeking nuclear weapons, see List of states with nuclear weapons.

There are two basic types of nuclear weapon. The first type produces its explosive energy through nuclear fission reactions alone. Such fission weapons also commonly referred to as atomic bombs or atom bombs (abbreviated as A-bombs), though their energy comes specifically from the nucleus of the atom.

In fission weapons, a mass of fissile material (enriched uranium or plutonium) is assembled into a supercritical mass—the amount of material needed to start an exponentially growing nuclear chain reaction—either by shooting one piece of sub-critical material into another (the "gun" method), or by compressing a sub-critical sphere of material using chemical explosives to many times its original density (the "implosion" method). The latter approach is considered more sophisticated than the former, and only the latter approach can be used if plutonium is the fissile material.

A major challenge in all nuclear weapon designs is to ensure that a significant fraction of the fuel is consumed before the weapon destroys itself. The amount of energy released by fission bombs can range between the equivalent of less than a ton of TNT upwards to around 500,000 tons (500 kilotons) of TNT.^[2]

The second basic type of nuclear weapon produces a large amount of its energy through nuclear fusion reactions. Such fusion weapons are generally referred to as thermonuclear weapons or more colloquially as hydrogen bombs (abbreviated as H-bombs), as they rely on fusion reactions between isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium). However, all such weapons derive a significant portion – and sometimes a majority – of their energy from fission (including fission induced by neutrons from fusion reactions). Unlike fission weapons, there are no inherent limits on the energy released by thermonuclear weapons. Only six countries—United States, Russia, United Kingdom, People's Republic of China, France and India—have conducted thermonuclear weapon tests. (Whether India has detonated a "true," multi-staged thermonuclear weapon is controversial.)^[3]

The basics of the Teller–Ulam design for a hydrogen bomb: a fission bomb uses radiation to compress and heat a separate section of fusion fuel.

Thermonuclear bombs work by using the energy of a fission bomb in order to compress and heat fusion fuel. In the Teller-Ulam design, which accounts for all multi-megaton yield hydrogen bombs, this is accomplished by placing a fission bomb and fusion fuel (tritium, deuterium, or lithium deuteride) in proximity within a special, radiation-reflecting container. When the fission bomb is detonated, gamma and X-rays emitted first compress the fusion fuel, then heat it to thermonuclear temperatures. The ensuing fusion reaction creates enormous numbers of high-speed neutrons, which then can induce fission in materials which normally are not prone to it, such as depleted uranium. Each of these components is known as a "stage," with the fission bomb as the "primary" and the fusion capsule as the "secondary." In large hydrogen bombs, about half of the yield, and much of the resulting nuclear fallout, comes from the final fissioning of depleted uranium.^[2] By chaining together numerous stages with increasing amounts of fusion fuel, thermonuclear weapons can be made to an almost arbitrary yield; the largest ever detonated (the Tsar Bomba of the USSR) released an energy equivalent to over 50 million tons (50 megatons) of TNT. Most thermonuclear weapons are considerably smaller than this, due for instance to practical constraints in fitting them into the space and weight requirements of missile warheads.^[4]

There are other types of nuclear weapons as well. For example, a boosted fission weapon is a fission bomb which increases its explosive yield through a small amount of fusion reactions, but it is not a fusion bomb. In the boosted bomb, the neutrons produced by the fusion reactions serve primarily to increase the efficiency of the fission bomb. Some weapons are designed for special purposes; a neutron bomb is a thermonuclear weapon that yields a relatively small explosion but a relatively large amount of neutron radiation; such a device could theoretically be used to cause massive casualties while leaving infrastructure mostly intact and creating a minimal amount of fallout. The detonation of a nuclear weapon is accompanied by a blast of neutron radiation. Surrounding a nuclear weapon with suitable materials (such as cobalt or gold) creates a weapon known as a salted bomb. This device can produce exceptionally large quantities of radioactive contamination. Most variety in nuclear weapon design is in different yields of nuclear weapons for different types of purposes, and in manipulating design elements to attempt to make weapons extremely small.^[2]

^{(from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon)}

Meebo, now support FB and Myspace

noreply@blogger.com (Antok Suryaden) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:40:42 PST

Meebo, a web based chat now launching an project named "Community IM" for instan messaging and social network such as MyYearbook and Flixster.

Meebo now will be strongs with support to big instan messaging service such as Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, ICQ, AOL Instant Messenger, Google Talk and now will support Facebook Instant Messenger and MySpace Instan Messenger. Meebo announced :

"Today's announcement reflects Meebo's long-time goal of offering open access to all IM and social-networking users, as well as providing them with the best IM experience possible," co-founder and CEO Seth Sternberg said in a release. "People have friends across a variety of different social networks, and Meebo is a place where they can come for real-time social interactions with these friends, at any time."

Meebo also can running at Pidgin, with Pidgin Facebook Chat Plugin created by Eion Robb and finishing by Casey Ho, which described by mark on MySpaceIM, Facebook Chat, and Meebo! at Meebo Blog (http://blog.meebo.com/)

You can download Pidgin Facebook Chat plugin, an great free software for messaging at http://code.google.com/p/pidgin-facebookchat/ and Pidgin Software at here , which great support to:

AIM
Bonjour
Gadu-Gadu
Google Talk
Groupwise
ICQ
IRC
MSN
MySpaceIM
QQ
SILC
SIMPLE
Sametime
XMPP
Yahoo!
Zephyr

Seeing Mumbai Attack From Russia

noreply@blogger.com (Antok Suryaden) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 14:08:14 PST

Another vission and news published about mumbai attack, and great plan of America, you can see it from Pravda.ru. So different and if this an serious plan i think India and Pakistan should know before they get hot and expensive war. See below from Pravda.ru.

Proxy war between India and Pakistan will benefit 'divide and conquer' agenda of the USA and Israel

The USA has been the chief supporter of Pakistan for the past several decades. During the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, the USA funneled vast amounts of war materiel to Afghanistan through Pakistan, and much of that war material was diverted, with US permission, to Pakistani Terrorism against India. The USA actually created Al Qaeda, and Osama bin Laden worked as a CIA asset in Afghanistan and also in Kosovo.

During the past several decades the US government and the CIA have not only turned a blind eye to the Pakistani government's support of Terrorist training and Terrorist attacks against India, but the ongoing financial, training, and logistical support which the USA has provided for Pakistan shows that the USA has been a willing co-conspirator with the Pakistani government's efforts to attack and destabilize India.

Saddam Hussein was hired at the age of nineteen to work as an assassin for the CIA, and after Saddam's bungled assassination attempt against the Iraqi President, Saddam retreated to Cairo, where he was a frequent visitor to the US Embassy, and Saddam remained on the CIA payroll. During the Iran/Iraq War, in which more than a million people died, the USA openly supported Iraq and secretly supported Iran with arms sales as part of the CIA's illegal Iran/Contra operation. 'Divide and Conquer' is the game that the USA played during the Iran/Iraq War, and today the USA continues to play 'Divide and Conquer' with Iraq and Iran.

Now, after supporting Pakistan for decades, during which time the USA not only ignored, but also aided and abetted the Pakistani State Terrorism against India, the USA is making a public show of turning against Pakistan. The USA's recent saber rattling against Pakistan is not a result of the US government suddenly becoming 'wise to' or 'fed up with' Pakistani Terrorism. It is part of the USA's long range program of 'Divide and Conquer' against Pakistan and India. The USA and Israel intend to encourage or provoke India into a 'proxy war' against Pakistan.

Both Pakistan and India will suffer greatly from the coming 'proxy war' now being promoted by the USA and Israel, but no matter how much Pakistan and India suffer, the real winners of an all-out Indo- Pakistani War will be the USA and Israel, because the USA and Israel will profit from selling arms, materiel, and logistical support to both sides in the conflict, and the devastation of both Pakistan and India will benefit the geopolitical goals of the USA and Israel.

A likely victory by India over Pakistan in the coming 'proxy war' that is being encouraged and provoked by the USA and Israel will benefit the USA and Israel, because it will strengthen the economic and political bonds between India, the USA, and Israel. India will become a greater market for US and Israeli products, and India will become a more committed partner in the USA and Israel's geopolitical activities and goals.

The global police state which the US, the UK, and Israel want to create and rule as the 'world's policemen' is already taking hold in India, as the USA and Israel incite hostilities between Pakistan and India. The USA makes a public show of encouraging diplomacy between Pakistan and India, but behind the scenes the actions of the USA and Israel are manipulative and unscrupulous. Indian cooperation with the USA and Israel will inevitably lead to India becoming a puppet of the USA and Israel, and a willing participant on the USA and Israel's global police state agenda.

by Gregory F. Fegel

10 Money Moves to Make Before Year's End

noreply@blogger.com (Antok Suryaden) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 13:54:40 PST

10 Money Moves to Make Before Year's End - 10 Financial Moves to Make Now - see TIME here
You can have any finacial and money move to save your company, taxes, portofolio and bankcruptcy, before 31 December 2008. For clear moves you can see TIME here.

Or you can read from reuters
That role of the benchmark of benchmarks, which greases the wheels of finance making it more “efficient” but more prone to spectacular error, is now under attack from a number of directions.

In retrospect, it seems clear that artificially low interest rates, due in large part to Treasury purchases by China seeking to keep its own currency and exports competitive, helped to turbo charge risk taking during the boom.

Living in a world of “low” interest rates and eternal moderation, investors didn’t realise how much risk they were taking on when they sought extra return above government debt, and after a while the money was so good they didn’t really care. In combination with credit ratings, another failed benchmark, that helped to fuel the boom.

Now we are living with the bust and coming to realize just how useful and dangerous benchmarks are.
“Nowadays it would be too much to ask for benchmarks. We all have to make our decisions on the basis of our own perceptions of the situation,” said Stephen Lewis, economist at Monument Securities in London.

Well and good, but as you can see the result of us all making our own decisions based on our own very limited data about how much risk there is in the world or in a given investment is abject terror and an inability to act: much less risk taking.

Best Free Software

noreply@blogger.com (donya kewarasan) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:51:04 PST

PCMag as a leading PC magazine, has a lot of and up to date review for software and hardware, satisfied more newly curiosity about new hardware and software. Have latest information about new software update and more. At the end of this 2008 year PCMag give information about the best free software this year, please use the free software if you can't buy bundled of expensive software. Below the 157 list of free and good software, that had no license, expiration, problem nor fees, and no kidding -Says PC Mag, thanks for the information and list -

Adobe Reader
www.adobe.com
Windows | MacOS | Linux | Mobile This simplest of Adobe's PDF programs lets you do just about anything PDF-related (besides create new ones), including online collaboration. It includes a host of features to aid users with disabilities.

AIM
www.aim.com
Windows | MacOS | Linux | Web One of the most widely used pieces of free software ever, AOL Instant Messenger offers a ton of capabilities.
Read our full review of AIM 6.5.

Audacity
audacity.sourceforge.net
Windows | MacOS | Linux Whether you're recording or editing, Audacity is all about audio in practically any format.

Firefox
www.mozilla.com
Windows | MacOS | Linux This PC Mag Editors' Choice Web browser has been on top of the heap since version 1.5 came out in late 2005. Read our full review of Firefox 2.0.

GIMP
www.gimp.org
Windows | MacOS | Linux The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) does most of what Photoshop does; the Gimpshop project (plasticbugs.com) even makes it look like Photoshop. Read our full review of The GIMP 2.0.

iTunes
www.apple.com/itunes
Windows | MacOSWhen you're attached to the top media player in the land (iPod), success is a given. iTunes continues to build sales and refine its organization of songs, video, games, podcasts, and more. Read our full review of Apple iTunes 7.6.

OpenOffice.org
www.openoffice.org
Windows | MacOS | Linux You can spend a lot for Microsoft Office or nothing for this suite with full-function word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentations, even an equations editor. Read our full review of OpenOffice.org 2.3.

Skype
www.skype.com
Windows | MacOS | Linux You'll pay to call regular phones, but if you sign up all your friends, Skype provides easy (and even international) calls and video-conferencing for nothing. Read our full review of Skype 3.0.

Thunderbird
www.mozilla.com/thunderbird
Windows | MacOS | Linux Mozilla's no-cost e-mail alternative is extensible, fast, and easy to master. And a wealth of free add-ons means there's not much this program won't do, from calendars to encryption. Read our full review of Thunderbird 2.

Ubuntu
www.ubuntu.com
Linux This Linux-based OS comes with many of these Hall of Fame products (Firefox, OpenOffice.org) preinstalled.

WinAmp
www.winamp.com
Windows After a decade of playing music, the "skinnable" WinAmp has several versions, including one with full CD ripping and burning.

ajaxWindows
www.ajaxwindows.com
Web A virtual operating system (aka Web OS), it uses Asynchronous Java-Script and XML (AJAX) programming to mimic the look and feel of a Windows desktop in Firefox or IE. It stores files (using Gmail) and runs its own applications, plus Web apps like Meebo and Google Maps. If you can launch a Web browser, you can get work done through ajaxWindows.

eyeOS
eyeos.info
WebThis Web OS has ultra-simplified applications, including an RSS reader, satellite maps, a word processor, even a browser—yes, for browsing the Web while on the Web.

Freespire 2.0
www.freespire.org
Linux This community-driven OS is based on Linspire (formerly Lindows)—a Linux distro that looks like Windows, with an emphasis on compatibility with other platforms.

Glide
www.glidedigital.com
Web | Flash Sleek style sets this Web OS apart, as does the ability (using a separate utility) to sync files, bookmarks, and e-mail from your real OS. Read our full review of Glide Effortless.

gOS
www.thinkgos.com
Linux Ubuntu-based and powered by Google's apps (just don't call it Google OS), gOS comes with the $200 PCs from Wal-Mart, but you can download it for any PC.

avast! 4 Home Edition
www.avast.com
Windows Spiffy-looking avast! notifies you by e-mail or IM if it catches a virus. You can't schedule scans, but its recovery database can help if a virus damages your files.
Read our full review of avast! 4 Home Edition.

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition
free.grisoft.com
WindowsIts control center is awkward, but AVG scans files on demand, upon access, on a schedule, and in e-mail. Its rescue disks will help you recover from disaster.
Read our full review of AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition.

Avira AntiVir Personal Edition Classic
www.free-av.com
WindowsAntiVir scans files on demand, upon access, and on a schedule; it doesn't scan e-mail attachments until they're saved, but it does go to work on rootkits. It's especially good at coexisting with other security software. Like most good AV software, it has the Virus Bulletin's VB100% award and certification for virus detection from ICSA Labs.
Read our full review of Avira AntiVir Premium Security Suite.

HijackThis
www.trendsecure.com
Windows Run HijackThis, save a log, and then post the log on sites that support the program. You'll quickly get personalized expert help to remove any malware.

NanoScan
www.nanoscan.com
Windows | WebIn less than a minute, NanoScan can analyze all processes running on your computer and identify viruses, Trojan horses, spyware, or other malicious programs.

ThreatFire AntiVirus
www.threatfire.com
WindowsThreatFire detects the bad guys by their behavior, not by outdated virus signatures. It's surprisingly accurate and a good companion to standard antivirus apps.
Read our full review of ThreatFire 3.

Trend Micro HouseCall
housecall.trendmicro.com
Windows Use the venerable HouseCall online scanner to get a second opinion, or use the app for cleanup when malware prevents installation of a local antivirus utility.

Comodo Firewall Pro
www.personalfirewall.comodo.com
Windows This protective dragon for XP and Vista keeps hackers out of your system, controls which programs can access the Net (its whitelist of about one million means you get fewer pop-ups), and blocks tricky "leak test" techniques. It's both tough and good-looking.
Read our full review of Comodo Firewall Pro.

ShieldsUP!
www.grc.com
Windows | WebBe sure your fire-walls are keeping your always-on Internet connection hidden from attackers. Shields-UP! provides a quick confirmation.
Read our full review of ShieldsUP!.

SmoothWall Express
www.smoothwall.org
LinuxGot a spare PC running a Pentium 200 MHz or higher with 128MB of RAM? Turn it into a dedicated network firewall with this open-source download.

ZoneAlarm Free
www.zonealarm.com
Windows The free edition remains a useful protector against hack attacks and against programs that abuse your Internet connection.

EULAlyzer
www.javacoolsoftware.com
Windows Wonder what you're agreeing to when you click "I Accept"? Don't worry; just drag EULAlyzer's target icon onto the EULA for a quick report on any troublesome language.
Read our full review of EULAlyzer Personal 1.1.

Hotspot Shield
www.anchorfree.com
WindowsCreate an instant virtual private network (VPN) tunnel between your laptop and the router at any Wi-Fi hot spot to protect your data from snoops on the public airwaves, even if you're using extra encryption. If you're on a network that limits the use of certain apps (such as Skype), the VPN could give you unfettered access. It even works with your wired connection for an extra layer of security.

Kruptos 2
www.kruptos2.co.uk
Windows Kruptos makes a file accessible only to someone who knows the password; it includes a file shredder.

PC Flank
www.pcflank.com
Windows | WebWhile ShieldsUP! tests your firewall's ability to stealth all ports, PC Flank performs surgical strikes that emulate specific malware attacks to verify that your firewall blocks them.

SendShield
www.sendshield.com
Windows This Outlook add-on strips out extra info and tracked changes in Word documents attached to messages.

mint
www.mint.com
Web Mint isn't like Quicken, where you enter in all your transactions. Instead, it syncs with your bank and credit card accounts online, checks your spending habits, and tells you how to improve to save money. If you're not paying attention to your spending, it'll send you regular alerts to inform you where your money has gone (nice for making sure you haven't been ripped off).

GnuCash
www.gnucash.org
LinuxLinux users can track their bank accounts, stocks, and expenses in this financial program using a double-entry accounting method.

AbiWord
www.abiword.com
Windows | MacOS | Linux Volunteers keep this open-source word processor alive. It closely mimics the look and feel of Microsoft Word 2003 and earlier.
Read the full review of AbiWord 2.0.

Gliffy
www.gliffy.com
Web | Flash An online-only diagramming tool with more options than you can flowchart. The free version is limited to five diagrams.

Google Docs
docs.google.com
Web | Mobile Google's slickly designed office suite offers online shared word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations-and best of all, finally a solid alternative in the office-suite space to the totally dominating Microsoft. Upload or e-mail your current documents for storage and editing.
Read the full review of Google Docs.

IBM Lotus Symphony
symphony.lotus.com
Web | Mobile A much prettier version of OpenOffice.org, Symphony is prepped for presentations, spreadsheets, and word processing in a single window (but lacks OO's drawing and database modules).
Read the full review of IBM Lotus Symphony Beta.

KompoZer
www.kompozer.net
Windows | MacOS | Linux A full WYSIWYG Web-page authoring tool akin to Dreamweaver, KompoZer integrates an FTP site manager for file uploads.

NeoOffice
www.neooffice.com
MacOSThis version of OpenOffice.org has the same great tools and price (free), but with an interface designed specifically for the Mac OS.

Notepad++
notepad-plus.sourceforge.net
Windows Notepad++ handles text--especially source code-in ways the basic Windows Notepad could only dream of, with embellishments like tabs and color coding.
Read the full review of Notepad++.

Scribus
www.scribus.net
Windows | MacOS | Linux This open-source page layout tool has features comparable to big names like PAgemaker, plus support for PDFs and scalable vector graphics (SVG).

Windows Live Mail
get.live.com
WindowsLive Mail not only reads your Hotmail, but also can check POP, IMAP, or HTTP mail accounts. It works as an RSS feed reader and a newsreader.

Zoho
www.zoho.com
Web | MobileZoho features every tool you could want-word processing, spreadsheet, presentations, database, even a wiki-and several you never knew you needed. Some are also available off-line.
Read the full review of Zoho.

Plaxo
www.plaxo.com
Web Perhaps the ultimate online address book, Plaxo is enhanced with the superpowers of a social network and plug-ins for many Web-based services like Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and LiveJournal for sharing across the Internet.

Backpack
www.backpackit.com
WebBackpack is more than a to-do list site. Your five easy-to-update pages send reminders via e-mail or SMS and include a whiteboard for online collaboration.
Read the full review of Backpack.

EssentialPIM Free
www.essentialpim.com
WindowsImagine taking the e-mail out of Microsoft Outlook to get a killer personal information manager (PIM). That's what EssentialPIM is all about.

Google Calendar
calendar.google.com
Web | MobileFeaturing seamless integration with other Google products, sharing capabilities, and SMS reminders, this Web app does for calendars what Google did for search.
Read the full review of Google Calendar.

Lightning
www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning
Windows | MacOS | LinuxTo be more like Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird needs a calendar. Lightning provides that, plus a to-do list. It can even sync with Google Calendar.

Power Calculator
www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx Windows This XP-only PowerToy replaces the lame Windows calculator with a mathematical powerhouse.

Remember The Milk
www.rememberthemilk.com
Web | MobileNever forget another grocery item, or anything else, using this extensible online task manager. It'll send reminders via e-mail, SMS, and IM.

Sunbird
www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird
Windows | MacOS | LinuxSunbird is Mozilla's standalone calendar for tracking events and upcoming tasks. It's a sister to Lightning, which adds the same functions to Thunderbird.

30 Boxes
www.30boxes.com
WebOne of the best-looking online calendars, 30 Boxes features easy-to-grasp pop-ups for adding events and viewing schedule details.

Yahoo! Calendar
calendar.yahoo.com
WebTrack your schedule and share it with friends, then sync your calendar with Outlook or your phone. It's a great place to back up a handheld.

Allway Sync
www.allwaysync.com
Windows Sync files between your PC and an external drive, filtering by folder, file name, or file type. The program displays warnings about questionable files before syncing.

DriveImage XML
www.runtime.org
Windows Make an image of your entire hard drive for backup and restore purposes.

FolderShare
www.foldershare.com
Windows | MacOSInstall the utility on multiple computers, create an online account where you identify each computer, and pick folders to synchronize. Up-to-date data becomes available on all those PCs whenever you make a change in a folder, with sync taking place in the background so you're never disturbed, just happy to find your files wherever you work.
Read the full review of FolderShare.

MozyHome Free
www.mozy.com
Windows | MacOS MozyHome provides automatic online backup for up to 2GB of your data.

PassPack
www.passpack.com
Web Pack away all your passwords in this secure online vault; it even logs you in to Web sites.

SyncToy v2.0
www.microsoft.com/downloads
Windows Make sure folders across your networked computers contain the same files, even on drives that change location and name.

WinClone
www.twocanoes.com
MacOS Bootcamp users: Now you can clone (back up) your Windows XP/Vista partition for reinstall on a new Mac.

Launchy
www.launchy.net
Windows Launchy launches (duh) applications, files, folders, or searches via a command-line-esque interface.

ObjectDock
www.stardock.com
Windows Organize your application shortcuts in a toolbar that mimics the look and feel of the Macintosh dock, complete with icon animations. It will even mimic Windows Taskbar buttons. Add in extras (docklets) like real-time clock and weather forecasts, even a fully functional Windows Start button and Recycle Bin, to get everything you need.

QuickSilver
www.blacktree.com
MacOS This open-source launcher takes plug-ins that allow it to do almost anything you want in the MacOS.

Absolute Uninstaller
www.glarysoft.com
Windows Replace the Add/Remove Programs control panel in XP to get batch uninstalls and clear out leftovers that Windows frequently misses when uninstalling.

CCleaner
www.ccleaner.com
Windows The extra C is for crap, and that's what CCleaner gets rid of: all the detritus left behind in the course of using Windows.

CoolMon
www.coolmon.org
WindowsCoolMon displays all of your system's vital statistics, including use of your CPU, RAM, and hard drives, internal PC temperature, and more.

Defraggler
www.defraggler.com
Windows Defragment your entire hard drive-or just one heavily fragmented file at a time.

DriverView
www.nirsoft.net
Windows DriverView lists every single device driver running on your system, with extra info on each.

Eraser
www.heidi.ie/eraser
WindowsShredders are popular in the office, so why not have the digital equivalent? Eraser adds a right-click menu that will do away with a file or folder forever.

FileZilla
www.filezilla-project.org
Windows | MacOS | Linux Download this FTP client for accessing multiple sites or to use as an FTP server. In both cases, FileZilla has convenient drag-and-drop support.

Glary Utilities
www.glaryutilities.com
Windows Glary offers a ton of utilities for cleaning, optimizing, and securing Windows in one package.

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007
www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc
WindowsInstall anything-DOS, OS/2, or any earlier version of Windows-as a virtual machine. It'll run in a separate window on your Vista or XP desktop.
Read the full review of Microsoft Virtual PC 2007.

SandBoxie
www.sandboxie.com
Web Place a layer of "transient storage"-a sandbox-between your applications and your hard disk to stay safe.

SecureZIP
www.securezip.com
Windows Compress and decompress files on the fly, even in e-mail through Outlook integration, and encrypt archives as desired.

Task Killer
www.rsdsoft.com
Windows Stop any Windows process dead; this is handy for clearing frozen applications.

TinkerTool
www.bresink.com
MacOS Get access to additional preference settings in Mac OS X to turn on hidden features.

Uniblue ProcessScanner
www.processlibrary.com
Windows | Web You can do the Ctrl-Alt-Delete salute in Windows to see what's bogging down your PC, but can you understand the results? ProcessScanner, coupled with the online Process Library, provides extra information on each process (like whether it autostarts or not, and who makes the software in question), and even lists the security risk to your system for running it.

BitLet.org
www.bitlet.org
Web Who needs a BitTorrent client? Just find the torrent metafile link on a tracker site, plug it in at BitLet.org, and let it retrieve the file as if you were downloading it from a regular Web site.

Universal Extractor
www.legroom.net
Windows See what's inside any archive file—ZIP, RAR, even EXE.

uTorrent
www.utorrent.com
Windows The tiniest BitTorrent client around (only 214K) comes with all the torrent download features you crave.

Battery Status
users.rcn.com/tmtalpey/BattStat
Windows This app runs in the system tray and takes advantage of smart battery support in XP/Vista to provide loads of info on laptop-power usage.

Google Desktop
desktop.google.com
Windows | MacOS | Linux Let Google index and search your hard drive contents. The sidebar adds graphical widgets to your desktop.

miniMIZE
aquaria.za.net
Windows miniMIZE puts thumbnails of your minimized applications on the desktop for easier access.

Quero Toolbar 4
www.quero.at
Windows Replace the Internet Explorer address bar to integrate ad blocking and make IE7 look more like IE6.

Vista Drive Icon
drvicon.sourceforge.net
Windows Add one of Vista's best features to XP: smart drive icons showing the current capacity of each hard drive.

XYplorer
www.xyplorer.com
Windows Multiple tabs and improved search enhance and replace the boring old Windows Explorer.

Yahoo! Widgets
widgets.yahoo.com
Windows | MacOS Fill your desktop with tiny interfaces for everything from stock picks to RSS feeds to weather forecasts (using Doppler radar!) to Wi-Fi sensors to remote desktops to countdown clocks-to name a few. Pick from over 4,300; some are more useful than others, but almost all are interesting to look at.

Foxit Reader
www.foxitsoftware.com
Windows Perhaps the fastest PDF reader around, Foxit includes a free annotation tool. Add-ons enable support for new file formats and UI languages.

Samuraj Data
view.samurajdata.se
Web You can display PDF files in your Web browser when no other reader is available.

ScanR.com
scanr.com
Web | Mobile Instantly perform optical character recognition (OCR) on pictures by e-mailing them from your phone to ScanR.com.

YouConvertIt.com
youconvertit.com
WebThis site turns just about any file into a different kind of file, even online videos from YouTube. It also converts units of energy, force, length, and more.

ZamZar
www.zamzar.com
WebFile conversion is no longer a complete nightmare. Just go to ZamZar, upload a file, choose from a long list of extensions (including image, doc, music, video, and compression types), and enter your e-mail address. When it's done, ZamZar will send you the converted file.

LogMeIn Hamachi
secure.logmein.com
Windows | MacOS | Linux Instantly create a free, peer-to-peer VPN connection between your computer and other people's. Download the software, create a network with a unique name, give it to friends you want to join, and start sharing files with them—even your iTunes folder.

NetStumbler
www.netstumbler.com
Windows Use it to detect any Wi-Fi network in your vicinity and see if it's open for use, or just use it to troubleshoot your own.

PrinterAnywhere
www.printeranywhere.com
Windows Share your printer with others over the Web; in turn, send jobs to other shared printers, no matter their location.

Blogger
www.blogger.com
Web | Mobile Blogger was one of the first blog-publishing tools. Years after Google bought it, it remains one of the best, especially for newbies. Create a brain-dead simple weblog and let Blogger host it (with a blogspot.com name) using the slew of provided templates, or use it to publish a blog on your own domain.

w.bloggar
www.wbloggar.com
Windows This post and template editor can handle multiple blogs, across multiple blogging systems.

Windows Live Writer
get.live.com
WindowsLive Writer is not a word processor, but a universal, WYSIWYG blog-posting tool more powerful than most blog services' own tools.

WordPress
www.wordpress.com
WebIt lacks the simplicity of Blogger or Vox, but the commercial offshoot of WordPress.org offers some of the best tools of any hosted blogging service.

Bloglines
www.bloglines.com
Web | Mobile Keeping track of your daily Web news reading can be a nightmare. This Ask.com-owned news aggregator is one of the cleanest and most straightforward methods for keeping your RSS feeds under control, and the new beta version features a great new interface that steals some of the best features of Google Reader.

Google Reader
reader.google.com
Web | Mobile Google Reader is arguably the best RSS/newsfeed reader on the Internet. Read feeds while off-line or on your mobile phone.

Netvibes
www.netvibes.com
Web This is a handsome combination of online RSS reader and podcast aggregator, with some widget apps thrown in.

Meebo.com
www.meebo.com
Web This polished Web app aggregates your AOL, Gmail, ICQ, Jabber, Windows, and Yahoo! buddy lists into a single, Web-based instant-messaging and chat-room experience. Meebo is building in extras, such as games you can play with IM buddies, as well as video and audio chat you'd find with your regular IM client software.

Pidgin
www.pidgin.im
Windows | Linux Open source tackles instant messaging in this client, which supports more IM networks than you've ever heard of.

Trillian
www.ceruleanstudios.com
WindowsAccess all your IM accounts (AIM, ICQ, Windows Messenger, Yahoo!, and more) from a single interface that also logs all your conversations, if you desire.

GizmoProject
www.gizmoproject.com
Windows | MacOS | Linux Gizmo competes with Skype to offer free, peer-to-peer, over-the-Internet phone and video calls, but uses open standards.

Gmail
www.gmail.com
Web | Mobile What to do with nearly limitless e-mail storage space—that's the enviable quandary of Gmail users, who can store up to 5.5GB worth of e-mail and chats. And the amount is constantly growing. Other perks include advanced search options, real-time updates, and "conversations," in which e-mail chains are stored in one continuous thread for easy perusal.

Mail Redirect
addons.mozilla.org
Windows | MacOS | Linux This add-on for Thunderbird lets you bounce a message to the proper recipient without revealing that you got the message first.

ooVoo
www.oovoo.com
Windows | MacOSooVoo video chat is more P2P than Skype (no supernodes!), with a better picture. It supports up to six co-videoconferencers, file transfers, and group text chat.

SightSpeed
www.sightspeed.com
Windows | MacOSSightSpeed has better video quality than ooVoo, but in a less attractive interface. More than two video chatters will cost you, as will file transfer and group chat.

Juice
http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net
Windows | MacOS | Linux Aggregate all your favorite podcasts in one place for easy listening.

Levelator
www.conversationsnetwork.org/levelator
Windows | MacOS | Linux Levelator adjusts the levels of your audio files to give the perfect balance.

Reaper
www.cockos.com/reaper
Windows | MacOS The name is short for Rapid Environment for Audio Production, Engineering, and Recording. That pretty much says it all.

Wavosaur
www.wavosaur.com
Web A low-price and low-profile audio editor, Wavosaur doesn't even need installation. Just click the executable to start processing and recording sounds. It lacks some of the features of full programs like Audacity, but for quick-and-dirty MP3 editing it can't be beat.

Cinelerra
www.osalt.com/cinelerra
Linux This is professional video-editing software for the Linux crowd.

Eyespot.com
www.eyespot.com
Web Upload your clips, mix via drag-and-drop, and share your finished videos in one spot.

HandBrake
handbrake.m0k.org
Windows | MacOS | Linux Convert your DVDs to MPEG-4 video (or just the audio) for backup purposes.

Jing
www.jingproject.com
Windows | MacOSx Jing shares what's showing on your monitor with others online, or records it for future viewing.

Jumpcut.com
www.jumpcut.com
Web This online app provides Flash-powered video editing.

Miro
www.getmiro.com
Windows | MacOS | Linux Miro combines BitTorrent downloads with video playback to become the next best thing to your DVR.

MythTV
www.mythtv.org
Linux Use your Linux box as a homespun digital video recorder (DVR).

Songbird
www.songbirdnest.com
Windows | MacOS | Linux The open-source answer to iTunes (from the makers of WinAmp) plays your music and videos.

TVersity
www.tversity.com
Windows Turn your computer into a server to stream video and audio to just about any device on your network.

Ustream.tv
www.ustream.tv
Web Our reviews call this the absolute easiest way to broadcast live video from your webcam across the Internet.

Videora Converter
www.videora.com
Windows Convert nearly any video you can find online (or on DVD) for use on any video-capable iPod or iPhone.

VLC media player
www.videolan.org
Windows | MacOS | Linux Forget Windows Media Player. VideoLAN's open-source VLC can replace it, and nearly every other player, too. VLC supports almost every audio format and video codec imaginable and doubles as a server for streaming your music and video to other PCs. Change its skin to make it look like the player you want—even WMP.

YouTube Uploader
www.youtube.com/multifile_installer
Windows | MacOS If you've got a lot of YouTube videos ready to go online, upload them to the site all at once with the Uploader.

IrfanView
www.irfanview.com
Windows IrfanView previews images (or even audio and video) and then converts or optimizes them without opening a separate editor.

Paint.NET
www.getpaint.net
Windows This program is probably the closest thing to Photoshop you can get free, courtesy of a student project.

Picasa
www.picasa.com
Windows | Linux Google's photo manager makes it easy to get pictures off a digital camera, organize them, and even edit and share them.

Picnik
www.picnik.com
Web | Flash Instantly edit pictures in this Web site. Upload images from your computer, Flickr, Picasa, or elsewhere.

pikifx.com
pikifx.com
Web Another online pic editor, pikifx.com emphasizes special effects such as added text and borders.

rsizr.com
rsizr.com
Web | Flash With one of the best Web interfaces yet—all in Flash—rsizr.com incorporates smart resizing to avoid distortion.

Splashup
www.splashup.com
Web | Flash Another beauty with a Flash interface, Splashup sets itself apart with multi-image editing and a full-screen mode.

Windows Live Photo Gallery
get.live.com/photogallery
Windows Windows Live Photo Gallery gives Picasa (above) a run for its money, with many of the same photo-enhancing and sharing features—red-eye reduction, exposure adjustment, cropping, color, sharpen, and auto-adjust. What's more, Microsoft serves up histogram adjustment, panorama creation, and photo-CD burning.

Flock
www.flock.com
Windows | MacOS | Linux Another browser based on Mozilla, Flock emphasizes interaction with social networks and services. It also accepts many add-ons from the Firefox browser.

Maxthon
www.maxthon.com
Windows Replace IE or Firefox (but still use their rendering engines) with this highly customizable, multilanguage, tabbed beauty.

Opera
www.opera.com
Windows | MacOS | Linux | MobilePossibly the nimblest and most usable of all the browsers available, Opera did tabs first and still does them best. Added usability features like Speed Dial and Tab Preview keep popping up in new versions.

Prism
labs.mozilla.com
Windows | MacOS | LinuxPrism is a site-specific browser, meaning you simply load a Web app (Gmail, for instance) and let it run like any other application on the desktop.

DownThemAll
www.downthemall.net
Windows | MacOS | Linux You don't have to download one item at a time from a Web page anymore. DownThemAll manages batch downloads, splitting files into pieces so they arrive faster.

Foxmarks 2.0
www.foxmarks.com
Windows | MacOS | Linux Foxmarks can synchronize your Firefox bookmarks across multiple PCs, even multiple operating systems.

Googlepedia
code.google.com/p/googlepedia
Windows | MacOS | Linux In Firefox, Googlepedia loads the most relevant Wikipedia entry it finds alongside your Google search results.

Google Toolbar
toolbar.google.com
Windows | MacOS | LinuxThe toolbar brings Google's search and other functionality directly to IE or Firefox. It offers extras like auto fill, spell-checking, and one-click RSS feed subscriptions.

Greasemonkey
www.greasespot.net
Windows | MacOS | LinuxAdd this extension to Firefox and then extend it again with thousands of scripts that change the appearance and functions of almost any Web site.

IE7Pro
www.ie7pro.com
WindowsAdds a load of extras to IE7, including control over tabs, spell-checking, ad blocking—even Greasemonkey-esque scripts (see above).

IE Tab
ietab.mozdev.org
WindowsDo you prefer Firefox but still need to look at some sites in IE? IE Tab will load a site in a Firefox tab using the IE rendering engine.

ScribeFire
www.scribefire.com
Windows | MacOS | Linux This Firefox add-on sets up an interface for instant blogging on just about any blog system.

Tab Mix Plus
addons.mozilla.org
Windows | MacOS | LinuxTake total control of how tabs work in Firefox. Adjust how they look, revive those you closed by accident, send tabs to new browser windows-essentially any tab action you can imagine.

Zotero
www.zotero.com
Windows | MacOS | Linux Zotero makes it easy to keep track of all your research on the Web, including how to cite it in future reports.

Eyezmaze.com's Grow
www.eyezmaze.com
Web | Flash It's not a single game but a series that involves choosing "growing" items that are added to an online environment.

Geni.com
www.geni.com
Web | Flash Share your genealogy with everyone in the family. They can contribute more individual profiles until your family tree is complete.

Google Earth
earth.google.com
Windows | MacOS | LinuxFly over familiar terrain or foreign lands with Google Earth, a searchable database of satellite images and geographical data—even images of the heavens. You can go a step further with all sorts of downloadable, gee-whiz applications from scientists, media outlets, and other third-party developers to trick out your Earth-moving experience.

Google Maps
maps.google.com
Web | MobileThis interactive mapping tool goes beyond driving directions. View destinations in Street View, Satellite, or Terrain modes; check traffic updates; or look up info on nearby businesses.

Kongregate
www.kongregate.com
Web | Mobile Only 2,598 free games (as of this writing) to keep you busy online? Bring 'em on.

Second Life
www.secondlife.com
Windows | MacOS This 3D virtual world has hundreds of thousands of denizens. Access is free, but you'll pay a bit if you want to get some real estate, or even fancy clothes for your avatar.

The Best Free Software

Free (Okay, Cheap) Hardware

Manufacturers of even the most basic devices generally don't give anything away. And you're not likely to find breakneck performance at bargain prices. But it is possible to get fully computerized without spending a fortune. Read on to find the best tech bargains around the Internet.

DESKTOP
EverexTC2502 gPC
$199 street
www.everex.com
Green or Google, it doesn't matter what the "g" stands for. Just know that this is the lowest-cost desktop on the market today. Available at Wal-Mart.
Read the full review of the EverexTC2502 gPC.

MONITOR
Sceptre DCL20A 20" Widescreen LCD
$159.99
www.tigerdirect.com
TigerDirect offers the occasional bargain display, such as this 20-inch screen with $50 instant rebate.

LAPTOP
ASUS color Eee PC 2G Surf
$299 direct
asus.com
This tiny Linux notebook has just a smudge of a screen (7 inches), but you won't find a better combination of price and functionality.

PRINTER
Lexmark Z1300
$29.99 direct
www.lexmark.com
Since it includes an ink cartridge worth $18.99, the actual price of this compact color ink jet printer is arguably around $6. Out of ink? Buy a new printer.
Read the full review of the Lexmark Z1300.

CAMERA
JAZZ JDC5 QVGA 3-IN-1 Digital Camera
$10 street
audio-discounters.com
Small enough to hang on a keychain, this tiny shooter uses a single AAA battery to capture images measuring 352 by 288 pixels.

MEDIA PLAYER
Coby MP-C833 128MB MP3 Player
$10 street
www.cobyusa.com
It plays MP3s and WMA files and has all the music control buttons you'll need, plus it doubles as a USB thumb key for file storage.

MOBILE PHONE
Motorola C139 from Tracfone
$14.99 direct
www.tracfone.com
It may lack the sex appeal of an iPhone, but the C139 makes calls. They'll cost you 10 cents per minute, prepaid.
Read the full review of the Motorola C139.

SCANNER
Canon CanoScan LiDE 25
$49.99 direct
www.usa.canon.com
This no-frills, three-button flatbed scans pictures at 1,200 pixels per inch over a slow but workable USB 1.1 connection.
Read the full review of the Canon CanoScan LiDE 25.

Source:

The Best Free Software

by Eric Griffith and PC Magazine Staff

All of links and review are trademark of PCMag

Where is Russia's great car?

noreply@blogger.com (Antok Suryaden) — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 21:00:20 PST

By Kirill Bessonov on mnweekly.ru

If you ask a Westerner his opinion about Russian cars you will most likely hear the following joke: Lada engineers suggested a new anti-theft device for their products - an enlarged logo plate. And these jokes usually date back to the Soviet era.

Paradoxically, Russia has a proven track record of high-tech achievements in various other spheres. Russia's space program is out of this world (NASA has just extended the contract with Roskosmos to deliver crews and cargo to the ISS with Russian spacecraft); Russian weapons - from rifles to combat jets to submarines - are very popular on the international market, where Russia trails only the US in total volume of exports. This begs the question as to why a developed, high-tech nation cannot provide its citizens with decent cars - and then export them abroad.

The Moscow News asked the press service of the Russia's biggest carmaker, OAO AvtoVAZ, for their comments.

When asked why Russian cars are not popular with Western buyers, AvtoVAZ said this was not a correct assumption. They do not supply many cars to the West because domestic sales are viewed as the priority.

"The market demand patterns are different. And we soberly tend to work, where we can meet the demand," the press service wrote in a letter.

AvtoVAZ also said that the West still regarded Russian cars as descendants of the outdated 1970's Italian-designed Fiat 124. For a long time this was true, so today, as with any commercial product, AvtoVAZ-made cars need to regain western consumer confidence and effectively appeal to western standards.

AvtoVAZ staff were defensive about questions on the quality and reliability of Russian cars - a big concern for foreign buyers. The company's press service pointed out that their brand was not the only one criticized for lack of quality, and that much of this criticism was a legacy of Soviet times.

"Much of today's impression of Russian-made cars is based on a long tradition of Zhighuli cars being the only option available. AvtoVAZ-made cars have traditionally been a ‘people's car' in Russia. And they are still perceived this way. Most Russian motorists had at least one Russian-made car in their lives on the road" the statement to The Moscow News reads. "So, these cars, like an old spouse, are both hated and cherished by the Russians," the press service wrote.

A question about how Russia could match the quality of their Japanese competitors also produced a nimble swerve from the press office. AvtoVAZ said that their latest models, Lada Kalina and Lada Priora, were a "real giant step forward for Russian car making industry" and that production quality is due to step up another gear in the near future.

"Russia now has both the ability and the technology needed to produce a high-quality car. With many leading world carmakers localizing production here, bringing the best technologies, innovations, best practice etc. to this country, Russia will soon have enough suppliers' facilities and an experienced workforce to produce a high-quality model of its own. "

Not surprisingly, the car makers were optimistic that they were on the fast track to success, but an independent car industry expert, who asked to remain anonymous, was concerned that car production was stuck in a traffic jam. He suggested that the quality of Russian cars was indeed low and blamed the legacy of the Soviet Union for that, saying that all industry giants were built in Soviet times and had inherited the attitudes of that era.

"The emphasis was on the defense industry; consumer goods received almost no funding in the planned economy and could not develop. This is not only a problem for car makers. Russia is not famous for other products, for example, its television sets."

At the same time, our source revealed a little known, but real fact - Russia was among the few pioneers of the revolutionary rotor engine, similar to those found in the Mazda RX8 sports car. These tough engines were installed in Ladas that were used by police and special services. But in the 1990s, the plant started to make the product available for mass consumption as well. Sadly, their flaws became obvious - the gas-guzzling engine, while superb in performance, was expensive to run and required a costly overhaul after less then 50,000 kilometers. As it turned out, few mechanics could perform the repairs. All these factors led to the closure of the project - the first really great Russian car turned out to be too much of a problem for the average motorist.

However, for anybody who wants a decent Russian car should consider the sports version of the new Lada Kalina, our source said. Lada has its own factory teams competing in almost all branches of motor sports - from autocross to ice races. As required by the rules of sports, to qualify a car for automobile races the factory must produce at least 2,500 models.

Russia's latest entrant in this field is the Lada Kalina Sport, which has a 1.6 liter 16-valve engine, disc breaks, altered suspension and sports seats, as well as an aerodynamic body kit.

The Lada Kalina Sport is not officially exported, but real fans can try their luck and buy it in Russia - prices are around 300,000 rubles or about $11,000.

By Kirill Bessonov

from: http://mnweekly.ru/national/20081205/55359969.html

HIV & AIDS

noreply@blogger.com (donya kewarasan) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:34:58 PST

Press Release: WAD 2008: Are we honest about HIV & AIDS?
Asian People's Alliance for Combating HIV & AIDS (APACHA)
01/12/2008
************

Are We Honest About HIV & AIDS?

[All of] Asia is facing an unprecedented challenge of HIV&AIDS, with possibly huge economic and social consequences. Despite series of claims and commitments of the governments, donors and civil society in seriously pursuing the epidemic, large numbers of people continue to face a crisis of existence.

The debilitating human rights condition, increasing democratic deficit, unabated conflicts and increasing religious fundamentalism in most of the countries of Asia, pose great challenges to address the causes and consequences of HIV&AIDS. To add, increasing inequalities, mass exodus and exacerbating violence, particularly against women make the issue of HIV&AIDS more complex.

Families, particularly poor families, with HIV cases have started to face serious and multiple crises. They have not been able to meet treatment costs and are compelled to sell their land and properties hence trapped into the vicious circle of poverty and illness. Children are compelled to Drop-out [of] schools. Stigma and discrimination on the other hand is challenging people's right to lead a dignified life. Women and children are [among] the hardest hit.

Weak Public Health Care systems in the region do not have capacity to bear the burden of the disease. Governments are still reluctant to allocate sufficient budgets in this sector. Most of the ongoing programs are donor funded which constraint the liberty of national institutions as well as [putting] them under the fear [of] psychosis. In the mean time, most of the ongoing programs in the region are not sustainable.

Governance is another serious area which needs immediate attention. Money is not reaching the communities and this raises BIG and ethical questions- Are there quality funding mechanisms? Are there effective monitoring and evaluation systems? Are there enough and transparent governance mechanisms at global to local levels?

It is true that global economy and globalization strategies, structures and processes have directly and indirectly affected the governance structures both at the global and the national levels. Moreover, they operate through the networks of power which are created to sustain the interests of the ruling class élites consequently people at the bottom of society have been systematically marginalized, excluded and treated badly.

In the specific context to Asia, the Asian civil society has a long history of struggles for rights, justice and democracy. There are also powerful political and social movements and campaigns going on in the region. However, political interests being the driving force, issues which do not carry considerable political weight fail to arouse much interest to Asian civil society and the politics. Issues that fester marginal population having little political significance barely receive their attention. Both the civil society and the ongoing social movements in the region are still reluctant to talk about HIV&AIDS. Time has come for Asia to see democracy from the perspectives of the margin.

In June 2001, 189 Heads of State and government representatives signed the United Nations Declaration of Commitment on HIV& AIDS. They promised to fight stigma and discrimination, promote prevention, mobilize resources, advocate universal access to treatment and promote accountability. At a time of economic crisis, this should not be an excuse to reverse their promises.

Asian People's Alliance for Combating HIV & AIDS (APACHA) calls upon all the key stakeholders of [the] HIV response to carefully monitor the implications of current global economic crisis and the worsened food sovereignty crisis. The global HIV leadership must carefully monitor the situation and efforts should be taken to protect the poorest among the population, [a] group who are vulnerable to HIV infection and made vulnerable by HIV & AIDS. We call upon The Governments to "Keep the Promise!" Financial crisis should not be an excuse to turn away from the promises they have made. At a time when the global HIV&AIDS programs are witnessing potential funding gap we call upon the donors and the governments to fulfill their commitments.

Similarly we call governments to immediately introduce humanitarian relief programs for PLHA in poor families in Asia. We call for just and democratic governance in all HIV&AIDS related interventions from global to local levels.

Time has come for the leaders and citizens of Asia and the world to honestly link what they preach with what they do. APACHA calls for a wider collaboration of the governments, donors, UN agencies, civil societies, social and political movement groups to come together and take immediate action to respect human dignity and save millions of lives on face of HIV&AIDS.

Besides series of commitments- the question remains- Are WE Honest about It?

----------
Sent by: APACHA International Secretariat
Email: secretariat.asia@apachanet.org

---------
Stay Connected - Speak your world!

A posting from SEA-AIDS (sea-aids@eforums.healthdev.org)

SEA-AIDS is a regional eForum focused on AIDS, and other health and development issues in Asia and the Pacific.

SEA-AIDS is coordinated by the Health & Development Networks eForums Team (HDN, www.hdnet.org) with the support of Irish Aid (www.irishaid.gov.ie).

The views expressed in this forum do not necessarily reflect those of HDN or Irish Aid.

Reproduction welcomed provided HDN is informed of usage and source is cited as follows: SEA-AIDS eForum 2008: sea-aids@eforums.healthdev.org

Su-34 Fighter-bomber: Russia's New Rearmament Program

noreply@blogger.com (donya kewarasan) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:34:58 PST

MOSCOW - Russia's rearmament program, approved in 2006 for a period until 2015, provides for supplying modern weapons to its armed forces. One of them is the Su-34 Fullback fighter-bomber, which will replace the Su-24 Fencers.

The process has begun, but some say the replacement is taking too long.

The new fighter-bomber is said to be very good. An improvement on the Su-27 Flanker, it has cutting-edge equipment, including a modern crew and equipment protection system. The Su-34 is effective against personnel and military hardware on the battlefield and also against targets behind enemy lines. It can also be used for surveillance missions and against naval targets

The Su-34 will replace the Su-24M aircraft (about 400 planes), the Su-24MR surveillance aircraft (over 100 planes), and the MiG-25RB aircraft (about 70). Russia will have to produce between 550 and 600 Su-34s to replace these obsolete aircraft within 10-15 years.

However, the Defense Ministry plans to buy only about 58 such planes by 2015, and a total of 300 by 2022.

Many experts say that if the Su-24 and MiG-25RB aircraft are scrapped by 2020, Russia will be left without fighter-bombers and surveillance aircraft. Others argue that this number will be enough for the Air Force's new concept.

The concept is focused not so much on the combat characteristics of the Su-34, as on its long range, the ability to refuel in the air (including by other Su-34 aircraft with additional fuel tanks under their wings), and its comfortable cabin allowing the crew to make long-distance flights without becoming overtired.

Units armed with such aircraft can be used in the so-called pendulum operations, when an Air Force unit bombs a terrorist base in Central Asia today, delivers a strike at a missile base in Europe the next day, and three days later flies to the Indian Ocean to support a combined group of the Northern, Pacific and Black Sea fleets, with flights from a base in Russia.

The Su-34 aircraft has long-range precision weapons, can fly hugging the earth, and has a high level of protection, which should cut losses during lightning operations, while the use of a relatively small number of such aircraft allows training crews to perfection.

This is not a new concept. Elite units of top-class aircraft manned by superbly trained crews formed the core of the German air force during World War II, and Japan's Imperial Navy had a similar concept.

However, such elite units can be quickly weeded out by swarms of ordinary aircraft in a global war of attrition, such as World War II. From this viewpoint, Russia's new concept looks vulnerable, but then this country has the nuclear triad for a global war.

In a war of attrition, it will not matter how many such smart aircraft Russia will have - 200, 600 or 1,500. What will really matter is the yield of a nuclear bomb they will be able to drop on the enemy.

But in the event of a small war involving one or two adversaries, or a chain of local conflicts, the existence of such high-speed, highly protected and well-armed aircraft can be the decisive factor. Even 58 Su-34 fighter-bombers, used at the right time in the right place, would be a powerful force. A group of 200-300 such aircraft, divided into several units for use in key areas of the battlefield, will be able to fulfill the most complicated tasks.

Apart from the Su-34, the Russian Air Force will also receive other new planes, whose technical characteristics will maintain the force's combat potential at the requisite level. New units, set up for the fulfillment of specific tasks, will consist of fighters, bombers, early warning and command planes, flying tankers, and unmanned aerial vehicles.

These will be highly mobile units, which means that its aircraft can be quickly dispatched to the area in question. In fact, Russia's new concept is not unlike the United States' Aerospace Expeditionary Force (AEF), a flexible and powerful instrument of air warfare capable of quickly delivering strikes in any part of the world.

As for surveillance aircraft, industrialized countries intend to replace them with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The world is changing, and the new world will wage new kind of wars.

By Ilya Kramnik, RIA Novosti

from http://www.mnweekly.ru/world/20080424/55325432.html

Forecast for 2009: Stagnation, inflation and inaccessible loans

noreply@blogger.com (donya kewarasan) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:04:09 PST

On November 19, Central Bank governor Sergei Ignatyev and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin came to parliament to answer questions regarding options for weathering the financial crisis.

Reserves and policy

Some time ago, many MPs and Russians were shocked to learn that Russia's international reserves (gold and foreign currency) were deposited abroad. They wondered if this was wise, but soon everyone agreed that investing reserves in reliable foreign securities and bank deposits was the only way to safeguard them.

Ignatyev has assured the deputies that the strategy of investing international reserves changed after the financial crisis had spread from the United States to other countries. The bank has cut the share of dollar-denominated assets, including U.S. mortgage bonds, and increased the share of the euro and European securities.

Nevertheless, the financial crisis has bitten a large chunk off Russia's international reserves, which have decreased 24 percent from $597.5 billion in August to $453.5 billion by mid-November.

The Central Bank governor said reserves dropped $97.6 billion in September and October, with $57.5 billion spent on maintaining the value of the ruble. The rest was lost to exchange rate fluctuations or spent on assistance to the banking system.

Ignatyev refused to say if the Central Bank would continue to support the ruble at its current level to maintain income, or if it would gradually devalue it to maintain the international reserves. Unfortunately, lack of reliable information is motivating depositors to withdraw their ruble accounts to buy foreign currency, thereby delivering another blow to the banking system.

Judging by what the two officials said in parliament, the Russian economic authorities plan to invest the reserves in the banking and real economic sectors. Ignatyev said the Central Bank had promised Russia's 250 largest banks to compensate their potential losses in the inter-bank loan market. The list of recipients may be subsequently increased.

Kudrin said 200-400 billion rubles ($14.5 billion) of the $134.6 billion Reserve Fund, which is part of the international reserves, could be used to increase assistance to the regions next year. In all, the government may take 500 billion rubles ($18.1 billion) or even more from the fund in 2009, the Finance Minister said.

Even if the Reserve Fund does not grow on high oil prices, it would suffice for seven to 20 years, Kudrin said, using some unfathomable reasoning.

Inflation and rates

Ignatyev said inflation would amount to between 13 and 14 percent in 2008, which is considerably more than the target figure. The previous government forecast of 11.8 percent annual inflation became reality on November 10. This means that the interest rates of commercial banks, which cannot be below inflation, will be very high.

The CBR governor said there was a silver lining to this storm cloud, because high rates, which will also be applied to deposits, may help halt the flight of capital from the country and its banking system. The Central Bank has contributed to the process by raising its refinance rate by 1 percent, to 12 percent on November 12, thereby seriously worsening loan conditions in Russia.

As if ignorant of Ignatyev's words, Kudrin said inflation would be kept to 8 percent in 2009, which is extremely strange. The minister voiced support for the introduction of trade barriers to protect Russian producers from cheap imports, but at the same time said, "The prices of everything are falling."

He shocked economists by saying that the Central Bank's refinance rate could be lowered in the second half of 2009, when Russia overcomes the liquidity crisis. It is a complete mystery how Kudrin and Ignatyev will accomplish this goal if they intend to raise the rate and make loans even more inaccessible.

Way out of the crisis

Ignatyev and Kudrin looked like a two-man fire brigade running around trying to put out scattered fires. They provided a good backdrop for Economics Minister Elvira Nabiullina, who presented a long-term solution to the problem.

She said Russia needed a new economic model, because the global financial crisis had proved that the current system, which had helped the Russian economy to boom, had exhausted its potential.

It was based on high oil prices and availability of long-term foreign loans to Russian banks and companies. As a result, the Russian economy was moving lopsidedly, becoming increasingly dependent on the export revenue of several non-tradable sectors. Meanwhile, the financial sector was not developing fast enough.

Judging by Nabiullina's report, to overcome the crisis the Russian economy needs to adapt to reduced export revenues, rely on domestic resources, cut outlays, review expensive commodities projects, and raise productivity in manufacturing, which must eventually become "the engine of Russia's industrial growth."

Forecast for 2009

On November 18, the World Bank published its 17th Russian Economic Report. The Bank lowered its forecast for the growth of Russia's GDP to 6 percent from 6.8 percent in 2008 and to 3 percent from 6.5 percent in 2009.

The World Bank said, "Most of the impact is concentrated in the last quarter of this year when economic activity is expected to slow to about 2 percent.

Unemployment is expected to rise moderately to 5.9 percent (from 5.3 percent) by yearend, reflecting employment losses in labor-intensive sectors such as construction, trade and services as well as the financial sector undergoing restructuring."

By Oleg Mityatyev
from http://www.mnweekly.ru/business/20081127/55358884.html

Capitalism gets ugly by Robert Bridge

noreply@blogger.com (donya kewarasan) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:04:09 PST

Having just run the gauntlet of the latest financial crash with the shirts still on our backs, albeit nicely wrinkled and sweat-stained, perhaps it is an appropriate time to poke some fun at this icky little ‘ism' that wants to devour us all. And now ladies and gentlemen, the top 5 things Karl Marx never warned you about Capitalism:

5. Capitalism will never live up to its commercials. Capitalism is a lot like those automobile commercials that feature a smiling stud behind the wheel, hot babe at his side and not another car along Sunset Boulevard for as far as the eye can see. In reality, Capitalism is an eternal one-lane traffic jam, a never-ending treadmill, with everybody clamoring for the promised passing lane; the system is rigged that way.

I have one vivid image of the ongoing crisis that is going to be difficult to shake: friends, family and co-workers loading up on foodstuffs - pasta, canned corn, beans, salt, even matches - in order to survive a few extra weeks should the financial house of cards come tumbling down on our heads. Perhaps you know very intelligent people too who are suddenly talking about buying some farmland in the countryside "just in case." Eventually, I came to the conclusion that they are on to something. Think about it: You wake up one sunny morning, walk to the local hypermarket (is it just me, or is ‘hypermarket' one of the ugliest words in the English vernacular?),' and there is a chain across the doors with a sign that reads, "Sorry, Folks, Closed Due to Crisis." Personally, I find this more than a little disturbing. So where exactly is the "free" in this market? What Capitalism giveth, Capitalism taketh away.

4. Environmental Apocalypse Now. I will not beat this dead dog too long because by now we are all pretty sick and tired of hearing about the "dying planet." Yes, the glaciers in this big cocktail called Earth are melting, the weather has gone berserk and professional golfers are appearing in Iceland. My god, the end really is near. But here is the dry irony of the whole impending catastrophe: The inhabitants of the third rock from the Sun are shaking in their boots because the man-made financial markets are spiraling out of control, yet daily we accept with cool indifference the Yahoo! news that the very life support system of our planet is collapsing due to our reckless financial markets. Go figure.

3. The People are Miserable. Here is a nice bit of twisted Logic to ponder: A. Our happiness, the economists tell us, is directly proportionate to the amount of things we consume; B. Americans consume more than any other people on the planet; C. Therefore, Americans must be the happiest damn people on the planet. Wrong. According to a recent article in the Washington Post, one of the most popular products amongst "happy" Americans is anti-depressant medication. "One in 10 women takes an anti-depressant drug such as Prozac, Paxil or Zoloft, and the use of such drugs by all adults has nearly tripled in the last decade," according to data from the FDA. Incredibly, even the kids are lining up for their happy pills. "The number of children getting psychiatric drugs... soared. In 2002, about 6 percent of all boys and girls were taking antidepressants, triple the rate in the period 1994-96." Nationwide, the figures are at epidemic rates. "Overall, 44 percent of all Americans, including children, were taking at least one prescription drug in 1999-2000, a 5 percent increase since 1994."

So where are the happiest people on Earth? Yes, Denmark. Should we chalk it up as mere coincidence that its government officials, according to the nation's happy website, "exercise a considerable regulatory control and provide comprehensive services for the citizens"? Maybe.

2. Warped Democracy. In the West, the evil corporations own everything, even the political system. Have you ever heard of the Commission on Presidential Debates, CPD for short? Well, it's time you had, because this corporation has been regulating and sponsoring the US presidential debates since 1987, when the League of Women Voters mysteriously surrendered their duties. Incidentally, it was the Democrats and Republicans who initiated this little Beltway Brotherhood of the Ballot. This corporation de facto determines who gets to participate in the debates "as determined by five selected national opinion polling organizations." They use this data to determine if a candidate has a chance of attracting 15 percent of the vote. If these polling organizations say "no," based on their criteria, the CPD duly rejects the candidates [Forbes, Perot, Nader, etc.] from debating with the Dems and Reps. Maybe the corporate-owned media will expose such contradictions? No, Mr. Murdoch has better things to invest his time in.

1. Capitalism is dead, long live Capitalism. The latest crisis, which has governments scrambling to pump up their financial institutions, which collapsed due to the latter's sheer greed, has reinforced the belief that ‘socialism is for the rich, capitalism for the poor.' Actually, I truly believe that Capitalism is the best system we can hope for: it unleashes the highest capabilities of the people; it organizes development far more methodically than other systems; it is guided by the wisdom of the "invisible hand" of the market, which, although imperfect, does tend to be an accurate guide and compass. But can we honestly call what we have come to inherit - with massive corporate enterprises [read: Wal-Mart and McDonald's] dotting our local communities - genuine capitalism? Even Adam Smith would shriek in horror at what passes for "fair competition" today. I say, bring back the local butcher, the local pharmacy, the local shoe store, the local retailer, the local hardware store, the local restaurant, the local theater, etc., etc., and then we can talk about the ‘Crisis of Capitalism,' at least with a straight face.

By Robert Bridge

from http://mnweekly.ru/essay/20081016/55351147.html

About Crisis from Marina Pustilnik

noreply@blogger.com (donya kewarasan) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:04:09 PST

Living with crisis
By Marina Pustilnik

I was reading the news this morning and it felt like a body count. The global financial losses from the crisis are close to $3 trillion. Russian citizens have withdrawn 90 billion rubles from the banks. Banks are telling their clients about "temporary difficulties." Nobody wants to help Iceland. The price of oil has fallen to a 17-month minimum. Even Russian restaurant owners are starting to fire staff.

Approval of Moscow's budget is delayed indefinitely, Rosneft and Transneft are asking China for credits, while Malaysia is forced to break off a $470 million contract for European helicopters. Against this body count of losses comes the news that the markets have started the week with amazing growth - but the weary reader shrugs this off as "Oh, it's just a speculative run, not a real growth." News that the oil once again costs $65 per barrel instead of $60 also bring no cheer, although I remember very well that four years ago cheer it was.

It took us all very little time to learn to live the life of relative opulence even if we never had any access to the ubiquitous oil wealth. As our incomes were growing, we were getting used to a different level of living. We went out a lot, started taking three-day weekends to travel somewhere like Istanbul or Prague, discovered organic food and credit/debit cards that are accepted almost everywhere - except for our neighborhood stores and markets, where food costs less, but they only take cash. The oil was flowing and so were the dollars and it was hard to believe the "pessimists" who kept talking about the bubble of oil prices, the bubble of the Russian economy and the overall need to "prepare." We pointed to the huge currency reserves and a separate Stabilization Fund and said: "1998 will not be repeated." To those who told us that the ruble is overvalued, we said: "But look at the Big Mac index! The dollar is supposed to be worth 15 rubles, not 23!" And when I say "we," I don't only mean the Moscow "middle class", which is more like "upper class" to the rest of the country (and even to the majority of the same city dwellers). When I say "we," I mean the active participants of the economic process at all levels. When I say "we relaxed," I mean that the companies started hiring excessively without minding their production costs, that oil producers were pumping and not exploring as if there's no tomorrow, and that consumption was seriously becoming a goal in itself.

I am definitely not the first person to back this thesis, but I feel that it bears repeating: "Crisis is good because it will make us all healthier." Every serious illness has its crisis, and if the crisis is passed successfully, the patient lives and get healthy. I know that at the level where I'm at, I haven't felt the crisis yet, but there are plenty of people who are feeling its impact already. I know the crisis will hit the least socially protected people the hardest. I know we will become thriftier and start reconsidering our money-spending habits. But I also hope that the crisis will mean other things as well: that the domestic producers will start investing in production that will make them competitive against the imported goods; that the government will finally take the example of the United States after 1929 and invest a part of the Stabilization Fund in building the infrastructure, while simultaneously providing work for many people.

I dare hope that someday an honest day's labor won't be considered something to sneer at and a qualified worker or specialist will be as respected as an attorney or an economist. I know that in some respects I am being overly optimistic.

Speaking of the overall economy, it will probably just continue getting worse and worse, until it starts getting better and better. But I'm hoping that in the process there will be enough companies and people who will thrive as result of the crisis - because they are industrious, because they are optimistic, because they will know what matters and what is superfluous. And I hope that by the time the next crisis comes around, these companies and these people will help us all survive it easier than the previous one. And the next crisis will produce new companies and people who are able to work under pressure and so on - until the critical mass is achieved - and we are living in a different country and a different economy. But we first have to survive this crisis - it's not as impossible as one might think.

By Marina Pustilnik

Living with crisis
http://mnweekly.rian.ru/columnists/20081030/55353374.html

Moscow News
http://www.mnweekly.ru/
October 30, 2008

Thin Toshiba Portege R 600

noreply@blogger.com (donya kewarasan) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:34:58 PST

Genuine Windows Vista® Business 32/64-bit, SP1 with downgrade media for Windows® XP Professional
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor SU9400
3GB PC2-6400 DDR2 800MHz SDRAM
128GB Solid State Drive (SSD)
DVD SuperMulti (+/-R single layer) drive
Intel® Wi-Fi Link 5100AGN (802.11a/g/n)
Bluetooth® version 2.1 plus Enhanced Data Rate (EDR)

R600-S4202 : Detailed Product Specs

Operating System

Genuine Windows Vista® Business 32/64-bit, SP1 with downgrade media for Windows® XP Professional

Processor

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor SU9400

Processor Type

Core™2 Duo

Processor Number

SU9400

Processor Speed

1.40GHz

Front Side Bus

800MHz with 64-bit

Memory Size

3072MB

Memory Speed

PC2-6400 DDR2 800MHz SDRAM

Display Size

12.1" widescreen

Display Type

WXGA with High Brightness, LED sidelight, Transreflective type

Display Resolution

1280x800

Graphics Engine

Mobile Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD

Graphics Memory

128MB-1340MB dynamically allocated shared graphics memory

Hard Drive Size

128GB Solid State Hard Drive (SSD)

Optical Drives

DVD SuperMulti (+/-R) drive supporting up to 9 formats

Wireless LAN

Intel® Wi-Fi Link 5100AGN (802.11a/g/n)

Bluetooth

Bluetooth® V2.1 + EDR

Webcam

Webcam and microphone built into LCD bezel

Input Devices

85 key US keyboard, Toshiba Outdoor Display Switch, Toshiba Assist Button, TouchPad pointing device

Security

Finger Print Reader, Multiple-Level Password Utilities

LAN

Intel® PRO/1000 - 10/100/1000 Ethernet

Audio

Built-in microphone, Headphone jack (stereo), Microphone jack (mono), Built-in monaural speaker

AC Adapter

45W (15V 3A) 100-240V AC Adapter

Battery Type

Li-Ion (5800mAh)

Battery Life

Up to 7.53 hours

PC Express Slot

1-ExpressCard™ Slot

Media Port

Secure Digital (SDHC) slot

USB Ports

2-USB (2.0), 1-eSATA/USB (2.0) combo port with Sleep and Charge

Docking Connector

Software

Infineon® TPM Software Professional Package, Microsoft® Office Ready with Trial Office Professional 2007 (60-day trial), Trusted Platform Module (TPM v1.2), Norton Internet Security™ 2008 (60 day trial), Google Picasa™, AuthenTec EntréPad® TruePrint® technology, TOSHIBA Recovery Disc Creator, TOSHIBA ConfigFree®, TOSHIBA Disc Creator, TOSHIBA Security Assist, TOSHIBA Management Console

Weight

Starting at 2.4 lbs.

Color

Aluminum Silver

Warranty

3-Years Parts, Labor and AC Adapter; 1-Year Battery

he ultra-portable will be available in two models. The SU9400 will feature a 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 1GB of 800MHz DDR2 memory plus a 128GB SSD which will go for around US$2,930. The cheaper model will cost around US$2,120 for a slightly slower 1.2GHz Core 2 Duo with 2GB of 800MHz DDR2 RAM (yes, 2GB) and a larger 160GB SATA HDD.

Both models with come with 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1, four USB ports, a Gigabit Ethernet port and an SD memory slot. Battery life is an incredible 9 hours with a 3 hour recharge when off, plus they've squeezed in a 0.3-megapixel web-cam and microphone in the lid to round out the package.

The word around the net is that Toshiba claimed this model is also the world's thinnest laptop. I don't know if this was retracted, or if someone misread Toshiba's product description and it spread, but I can't find an official mention of it. One look at the specs will show that it is simply not true. Toshiba says the R600's thickness is 19.5-25.5mm. The MacBook Air is 4.0-19.4mm thick, undercutting the R600 even at the Air's thickest point.

The R600 is only available from Toshiba Canada's store for now but should be hitting the US shortly.

Sources:
Toshiba Canada and MacBook Air Specs
Via: Register Hardware and Mark's Technology News

Toshiba Launches Newest Ultraportable Innovation with Portégé R600 Laptop

At 2.4 Pounds and 0.77-Inch Thin, Portégé R600 Laptop PC Combines Executive Mobility with Innovative Features

IRVINE, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Toshiba’s Digital Products Division, a leading provider of mobile computing solutions, today announced the Portégé® R600 laptop PC. At 2.4-pounds(1), 0.77-inch thin(2), this engineering marvel incorporates an integrated 7mm DVD-SuperMulti drive making the Portégé R600 Toshiba’s ultimate ultraportable laptop.

As the successor to the award-winning Portégé R500 platform, the Portégé R600 offers its own unique collection of new features, such as Toshiba’s fourth-generation EasyGuard® Technology(3) with PC Health Monitor, an extended life battery, an enhanced LED backlit transreflective display and a durable chassis. Prices for the ultraportable Toshiba Portégé R600 start at $2,099 (MSRP)(4).

“As Toshiba’s signature laptop PC, the Portégé R600 embodies the company’s rich tradition of mobile computing innovation,” said Carl Pinto, vice president of product development, Digital Products Division, Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc. “The Portégé R600 builds upon Toshiba’s legacy of innovation and delivers a superior mobile experience by providing performance, functionality and flexibility in an extremely lightweight form factor weighing 2.4 pounds.”

Designed, engineered and manufactured by Toshiba the Portégé R600 provides users with high-quality and enhanced reliability in a laptop PC. Toshiba’s Portégé R600 includes the following leading-edge technologies:

* Design Enhancements: The Portégé R600 features an enhanced LED backlit transreflective display for a better viewing angle and contrast and a durable chassis with out increasing the size or weight of the laptop. The laptop PC's touchpad has been moved to the center and the buttons feature a tighter, firmer and more solid design. While the keyboard has been enhanced to provide a better tactile feel for touch typists.
* EasyGuard® Technology: Toshiba’s Portégé R600 laptop features Toshiba’s fourth-generation EasyGuard Technology with PC Health Monitor. This new feature is a preventative maintenance utility that continuously checks the performance and functionality of a laptop’s critical hardware components and will alert users when the system is in need of a tune up. PC Health Monitor tracks the status of critical components, such as hard drive status, battery life and CPU temperature and system cooling warnings. In addition to PC Health Monitor, Toshiba’s EasyGuard Technology is a proprietary, value-added series of hardware and software enhancements designed to better protect and secure one’s laptop during everyday computing. Components include HDD Protection, a spill-resistant keyboard(5), fingerprint reader and Trusted Platform Module (TPM).
* LED Backlit Transreflective Display: The notebook features a special button to allow users to toggle between indoor/outdoor modes depending on the lighting environments. Indoors, the LED backlit transreflective display produces an image rich in saturated color and of superb quality. Outdoors, the transreflective screen lets the sun’s light pass through and reflects it out, bringing images on the display to life.
* Solid State Drive (SSD): Select Portégé R600 configurations feature a 128GB SSD(6), making it one of the world’s lightest and thinnest laptops with an SSD. With no moving parts, SSD technology provides customers with an enhanced level of protection, reliability and fast data access.
* USB Sleep-and-Charge/eSATA Combo Port(7): This unique port provides convenience and speed by allowing data transfers to and from an eSATA external hard drive at rates up to five times faster than USB 2.0, and the ability to charge select USB mobile devices whether the laptop is on, off, or in sleep or hibernation mode.
* Green Attributes: The Portégé R600 is ENERGY STAR® 4.0 compliant and has achieved a Gold status through the Green Electronics Council’s Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT).

Complete product specifications for the Portégé R600 models are available at http://explore.toshiba.com/laptops/portege.

The Portégé R600 is available with a three-year standard limited warranty(8), which includes carry-in support at Authorized Service Providers throughout the country such as UPS Stores and Mail Boxes Etc. locations.

As a responsible global corporate citizen, Toshiba designs all of its new laptop PCs to be RoHS compatible(9), effectively reducing the environmental impact by restricting the use of lead, mercury and certain other hazardous substances.

Toshiba is offering a new, free electronic trade-in and recycling program which includes all laptop PCs and other select electronics, regardless of manufacturer, that have no trade-in value. For more details, please visit http://explore.toshiba.com/green. No purchase is necessary to participate in the recycling program.

About Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc. (TAIS)

Headquartered in Irvine, Calif., TAIS is comprised of four business units: Digital Products Division, Imaging Systems Division, Storage Device Division, and Telecommunication Systems Division. Together, these divisions provide mobile products and solutions, including industry leading portable computers; projectors; imaging products for the security, medical and manufacturing markets; storage products for automotive, computer and consumer electronics applications; and telephony equipment and associated applications.

TAIS provides sales, marketing and services for its wide range of information products in the United States and Latin America. TAIS is an independent operating company owned by Toshiba America, Inc., a subsidiary of Toshiba Corporation, which is a global leader in high technology and integrated manufacturing of electrical and electronic components, products and systems, as well as major infrastructure systems. Toshiba was founded in 1875, and today operates a global network of more than 740 companies, with 198,000 employees worldwide and annual sales surpassing $76 billion. For more information on Toshiba's leading innovations, visit the company's Web site at www.toshiba.com.

Why Mumbai - Taj Mahal?

noreply@blogger.com (Antok Suryaden) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:04:09 PST

Indian commandoes kill last 3 gunmen at hotel

Associated Press writers Anita Chang, Erika Kinetz and Jenny Barchfield contributed to this report.

MUMBAI, India – Indian commandoes killed the last three gunman at a landmark hotel late Thursday and were sweeping another luxury hotel in search of hostages and trapped people after suspected Muslim militants stormed targets across Mumbai, leaving 119 people dead.

Meanwhile, eight hostages were freed from the headquarters of a Jewish outreach group, according to an official of the Maharashtra state home department, speaking on customary condition of anonymity. However, it was unclear if any others remained inside the ultra-orthodox Chabad Lubavitch offices.

Gunfire and explosions could be heard well into the night from the Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels, two of the city's top gathering spots for the Mumbai elite, as well as at Jewish group's center. Throughout the day, commandoes brought hostages, trapped guests and corpses from the hotels in small groups.

The gunmen's main targets appeared to be Americans, Britons and Jews, though most of the dead seemed to be Indians and foreign tourists caught in random gunfire.

But clearly the gunmen — some of whom strode casually through their targets in khakis and T-shirts — came ready for a siege.

"They have AK-47s and grenades. They have bags full of grenades and have come fully prepared," said Maj. Gen. R.K. Hooda.

Ratan Tata, who runs the company that owns the elegant Taj Mahal hotel, said they appeared to have scouted their targets in advance.

"They seem to know their way around the back office, the kitchen. There has been a considerable amount of detailed planning," he said at a press conference.

India has been shaken repeatedly by terror attacks blamed on Muslim militants in recent years, but most of those attacks have been coordinated bombings that struck random crowded places: markets, street corners, parks.

The Wednesday night attacks were far more sophisticated — and more brazen.

They began at about 9:20 p.m. with the shooters spraying gunfire across the Chhatrapati Shivaji railroad station, one of the world's busiest terminals. For the next two hours, there was an attack roughly every 15 minutes — the Jewish center, a tourist restaurant, one hotel, then another, and two attacks on hospitals. There were 10 targets in all.

___

Associated Press writers Anita Chang, Erika Kinetz and Jenny Barchfield contributed to this report.

From : http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_india_shooting#full

------

Indian commandos battle to regain Mumbai hotels

By Charlotte Cooper

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Indian commandos battled to regain control of buildings and hotels in the commercial capital of Mumbai on Thursday after attacks by armed militants blamed by the prime minister on a "terrorist" group outside the country.

"The situation is still not under control and we are trying to flush out any more terrorists hiding inside the two hotels," said Vilasrao Deshmukh, chief minister of Maharashtra state which is home to Mumbai.

Police said 119 people were killed and 315 were wounded when gunmen -- at least some of whom arrived by sea -- fanned out across Mumbai to attack sites popular with tourists and businessmen, including two luxury hotels.

The death toll was only an estimate in a situation which brought the biggest chaos to the city since serial bombings in 1993 killed several hundred people in what was seen as revenge for the death of Muslims in Hindu-Muslim violence.

With the drama still unfolding, the final death toll could be higher.

Police said Indian commandos were fighting room to room battles to save people trapped inside two luxury hotels.

At least 10 Israeli nationals were also trapped in buildings or held hostage, an Israeli embassy official in New Delhi said. "It could be 10 to 20, it could be more," said the official, who declined to be named. "I don't think it is less than 10."

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh blamed militant groups based in India's neighbors, usually meaning Pakistan, raising fears of renewed tension between the nuclear-armed rivals.

"It is evident that the group which carried out these attacks, based outside the country, had come with single-minded determination to create havoc in the commercial capital of the country," he said in a televised address.

"We will take the strongest possible measures to ensure that there is no repetition of such terrorist acts."

Helicopters buzzed overhead and crowds cheered as the commandos, their faces blackened, moved into the Trident-Oberoi, where 20 to 30 people were thought to have been taken hostage and more than 100 others were trapped in their rooms.

Huge flames billowed from an upper floor.

Earlier, explosions rattled the nearby Taj Hotel, a 105-year-old city landmark on the waterfront, as the troops flushed out the last of the militants there. Fire and smoke plumed from an open window.

Dipak Dutta told NDTV news after being rescued that he had been told by troops escorting him through the corridors not to look down at any of the bodies.

"A lot of chef trainees were massacred in the kitchen."

At least six foreigners, including one Australian, a Briton, an Italian and a Japanese national were killed.

Commandos had gathered earlier outside a Jewish center where a rabbi was thought to have been taken hostage, but later apparently decided to hold off from an assault.

A militant holed up at the center phoned an Indian television channel to offer talks with the government for the release of hostages, but also to complain about abuses in Kashmir, over which India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars.

"Ask the government to talk to us and we will release the hostages," the man, identified by the India TV channel as Imran, said, speaking in Urdu in what sounded like a Kashmiri accent.

"Are you aware how many people have been killed in Kashmir? Are you aware how your army has killed Muslims. Are you aware how many of them have been killed in Kashmir this week?"

WALKING THROUGH BLOOD

Around two dozen militants in their early 20s, armed with automatic rifles and grenades and carrying backpacks full of ammunition, had fanned out across Mumbai on Wednesday.

At least some of them had come ashore in what police said was a rubber dinghy.

They commandeered a vehicle and sprayed passersby with bullets, fired indiscriminately in a train station, hospitals and a popular tourist cafe. They also attacked two of the city's poshest hotels packed with tourists and business executives.

Those who survived told harrowing stories of close encounters. Australian actress Brooke Satchwell, who starred in the Neighbors television soap opera, said she narrowly escaped the gunmen by hiding in a hotel bathroom cupboard.

"There was people getting shot in the corridor. There was someone dead outside the bathroom," the shaken actress told Australian television. "The next thing I knew I was running down the stairs and there were a couple of dead bodies across the stairs. It was chaos."

"We threw ourselves down under the reception counter," Esperanza Aguirre, head of Madrid's regional government, said.

"I took off my shoes and we left being pushed along by the hotel staff," she said. "I didn't see any terrorists or injured people. I just saw the blood I had to walk through barefoot."

Singh said New Delhi would "take up strongly" the use of neighbors' territory to launch attacks on India.

"The well-planned and well-orchestrated attacks, probably with external linkages, were intended to create a sense of terror by choosing high-profile targets."

The use of heavily armed "fedayeen" or suicide attackers bears the hallmarks of Pakistan-based militant groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Mohammed, blamed for a 2001 attack on India's parliament.

Both groups made their name fighting Indian rule in disputed Kashmir, and were closely linked in the past to the Pakistani military's Inter Services Intelligence agency, the ISI.

Lashkar-e-Taiba denied any role in the attacks, and said it had no links with any Indian group. Instead, the little-known Deccan Mujahideen claimed responsibility.

"Release all the mujahideens, and Muslims living in India should not be troubled," said a militant inside the Oberoi, speaking to Indian television by telephone.

The attacks were expected to spook investors in one of Asia's largest and fastest-growing economies.

Authorities closed stock, bond and foreign exchange markets, and the central bank said it would continue auctions to keep cash flowing through interbank lending markets, which seized up after the global financial crisis.

One of the first targets was the Cafe Leopold, a famous hangout popular with foreign tourists.

The attackers then appeared to target British, Americans and Israelis as they sought hostages in the hotels and elsewhere.

The attacks were another blow for the Congress party-led government ahead of a general election due by early 2009, with the party already under fire for failing to prevent a string of bomb attacks on Indian cities.

Police said they had shot seven gunmen and arrested nine suspects. They said 12 policemen were killed, including Hemant Karkare, the chief of the police anti-terrorist squad in Mumbai.

(Reporting by New Delhi and Mumbai bureaux; Writing by Simon Denyer; Editing by Myra MacDonald and Richard Balmforth)

© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved

from : http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE4AP75S20081127?sp=true

Syarikat Essay Photo Workshop

noreply@blogger.com (donya kewarasan) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:34:58 PST

Some the Islamic Religion Teacher of Java Can't Teach Pluralism

noreply@blogger.com (donya kewarasan) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:34:58 PST

Jakarta - Some 62% of teachers of Islam in public schools Java reject the non-Muslim leaders to become public. In addition, some Islamic religious teachers in Java are not tolerant and anti pluralism.

Rejection of the non-Muslim leaders to be leaders ranging from school principals to the selection of legislative elections. "The teachers can not teach pluralitas and tolerant attitudes. Actually, the attitudes and views of Islam, the religion teacher should support and participate in community life, the diverse," said Director of Center for the Study of Islam and Society (PPIM) UIN Jakarta, Jajat Burhanudin, in the Lontar Gallery, Jalan HOS Cokroaminto, Central Jakarta, on Tuesday (24/11/2008).

Furthermore, data from the survey institute, the teachers who teach in public schools these, 68% of the respondents rejected the non-Muslim to become school principals and 30% of the respondents support the elections to choose representatives only people who apply Islamic struggle.

The survey was conducted on 500 teachers at 500 high schools / vocational schools in Java during October 2008. Respondents were selected by random method using simple random. He also made structured interview to 200 students in 50 cities / districts. "Simple random sampling method that we use has a margin of error is less than 5%," he said.

Attitude is not tolerant in the religious views can also be 21% of respondents admitted to the exit from the religion of Islam should be killed. In addition, 79% of teachers prohibit students learn non-Islamic religions. "What is more alarming, 75% of teachers to teach students to invite non-Muslim Muslim to learn Islam. This shows the attitude that religion is not exclusive only apply in school," he said.

Selection of the schools consider the geographical pattern geographic pattern in general, SMA / SMK in Java. Namely 41% of high school teachers in the municipality, 25% of high school teachers in the district and 28% of high school teachers / CMS in the district. "The remaining 5% is a high school teacher / vocational schools in rural areas," he said. (Asp / nrl)

from http://www.detiknews.com/read/2008/11/25/163443/1042749/10/sebagian-guru-agama-islam-di-jawa-belum-bisa-ajarkan-pluralitas

Phenom II overclocked to 6GHz

noreply@blogger.com (donya kewarasan) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:34:58 PST

Posted at: 1:35pm 21st November 2008 by Ben Hardwidge on http://www.custompc.co.uk/news/605226/phenom-ii-overclocked-to-6ghz.html

Dry ice and liquid nitrogen cooling used to overclock AMD’s new CPU to 6GHz and beyond

Intel’s Core 2 architecture not only had AMD’s original Phenom over a barrel in terms of bangs per buck; it also had a much higher overclocking ceiling, but it looks as though AMD could have sorted the latter issue with the forthcoming Phenom II ‘Deneb’ CPU. AMD recently demonstrated the overclocking abilities of the new CPU using both dry ice and liquid nitrogen cooling in Texas, with some stunning results.

Unfortunately, it looks as though a lot of the details of the event are being kept under wraps until the CPU is officially launched; no cameras were allowed and no exact clock speeds have been revealed. However, it looks as though some suitably vague reporting has been allowed. PC Perspective reports that ‘the Phenom II reached WELL over 5.x GHz (read: REALLY over)’ when cooled with liquid nitrogen (-196°C) at 1.9V, while Nordic Hardware says that the chip was even able to ‘move north of 6GHz’ at a higher voltage.

As well as this, Nordic Hardware also claims that AMD demonstrated Phenom II CPUs running at 4GHz 1.6V with just air cooling, at a voltage of 1.6V. PC Perspective estimates that the chips will be very scalable when it comes to clock speed, while still retaining a reasonable heat output. The site reckons that a 3.6GHz Phenom II, for example, could have a TDP of 125W.

We’ve yet to see Phenom II for ourselves, but these reports suggest that the Phenom II has the potential for some amazing clock speeds with the right cooling equipment. As a point of comparison, we managed to overclock Intel’s new Core i7 to 4.27GHz using air cooling, while Asus has managed to clock the new chip to 5.4GHz using liquid nitrogen.

Of course, if the performance of the original Phenom chip is anything to go by, the Phenom II may not be able to match the Core i7 in terms of work per clock. However, it may be able to make up for this with a large amount of overclocking headroom and an appropriate Intel-beating price. Either way, it’s good to see that AMD may be becoming competitive again, and we’re looking forward to trying out Phenom II for ourselves.

I7, Nehalem CPUs and X58 chipset

noreply@blogger.com (donya kewarasan) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:34:58 PST

Specifications & Features

Core Frequencies - 3.2GHz (965), 2.93GHz (940), 2.66 (920)
QPI Speed - 6.4GT/s (965), 4.8GT/s (940,
920)
TDP (Thermal Design Power) - 130W
Stepping - 4
Number of CPU Cores - 4
Shared L3 Cache - 8MB
L2 Cache - 1MB (256K x 4)
Processor input voltage (VID) - 1.160v
.045-m
icron manufacturing process
Shared Smart Cache Technology
PECI Enabled
Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology (EIST)
Extended HALT State (C1E) Enabled
Execute Disable Bit (XD) Enabled
Intel 64 Technology
Intel Virtualization Technology (VT)
Packaging - Flip Chip LGA1366
Total Die Size: Approximately 263mm2
Approximately 731M Transistors
MSRP - $999 (965), $562 (940), $284 (920)

Everything you need to know about Intel's next-generation Nehalem CPUs and X58 chipset, including hints about how it will overclock

Note: This is a preview article, now that Core i7 has launched, please click here for the Core i7 launch coverage.

After Intel revealed more details about Nehalem to CPC at IDF Fall 2008, we’re finally in a position to tell you almost everything there is to know about the new Core i7 processor, which was, until recently, better known by its codename, Nehalem. After days of lengthy briefings we’ve discovered its new design, new features, new technology and eve

n some of its benchmarking and overclocking characteristics.

We’ll cover the basics in this section – what Nehalem is and why it’s such a sweeping change for Intel. Scroll to the bottom of the page to skip to read more in-depth discussions of specific aspects of the new CPUs that will form the basis of Intel's high-performance product line over the next few years.

NEHALEM - NATIVE AND INCLUSIVE

Nehalem is a radically new design for Intel: for the first time, the company is producing a 'native' quad-core CPU, where all four cores sit on the same piece of silicon. With its Core 2 CPUs, Intel used two dual-Core dies to create a quad-core chip.

Nehalem features Level 3 cache, something first seen on earlier Xeon server chips, but Intel has indicated its Core i7s will feature up to a massive 8MB (shared between all four cores) rather than the 2MB of the Phenom X4. Each of Nehalem's four cores has 256KB of lower-latency Level 2 cache rather than the 512KB of the Phenom X4.

The Level 3 cache of Nehalem is described as being ‘inclusive’, meaning that it holds the data of all the Level 2 caches. This means that if a core needs to fetch data, and it doesn’t find it in the Level 3 cache, it can be confident that the most up-to-date version of that data is held in system memory and fetch straight from there. If the Level 3 cache wasn’t inclusive, the core would first have to look at the cache of the other three cores to ensure that none of them had a more recent version of the data it needs. An inclusive cache is therefore said by Intel to be more efficient than an ‘exclusive’ cache design, even if it does mean that 1MB of Nehalem’s 8MB Level 3 cache is taken up by storing a copy of the 256KB Level 2 cache inside each processing core.

INTEGRATED MEMORY CONTROLLER

Intel has also followed AMD in bringing the memory controller onto the Nehalem CPU die rather than having it be part of the Northbridge on the motherboard. It's achieved this by modularising the design of the CPU. The seperate processing cores and caches are linked to the onboard memory controller via a new bus standard called QuickPath (sometimes called QPI, short for QuickPath Interconnect).

As QuickPath replaces the Frontside Bus (FSB) and Northbridge combo, it also takes over the role of allowing the CPU to connect to other system components, busses and controllers such as the PCI Express controller and DDR3 memory. This will, among other things, allow a Nehalem processor to have an integrated graphics processor, much like AMD’s forthcoming Fusion product. We doubt that Nehalem processors with integrated graphics will show up for at least six months, and Intel has given no roadmap for this.

NEW SOCKET

As a Nehalem CPU communicates directly with memory, it needs an additional bank of connections to the motherboard. The current Socket LGA775 doesn’t have enough pins to accomodate the memory controller, so Nehalem CPUs require the new Socket LGA1366 which has 1,366 connections to the motherboard rather than just 775. The two sockets are not compatible in any way, so you’ll need a new CPU cooler for Nehalem-based processors as well as a new motherboard.

Without a memory controller taking up space, the Northbridge of a Nehalem motherboard is much more streamlined than previous generations. The first Nehalem Northbridge will be Intel’s X58 Express, which provides 36 PCI-E 2.0 lanes for single 16-lane, dual 16-lane or quad 8-lane graphics setups. Both ATI’s CrossFire multi-graphics and Nvidia's SLI will work (although SLI support will be limited to certain approved boards).

HYPER-THREADING

The last big news about Nehalem is that it uses Hyper-Threading. This technology works just as it did with the Pentium 4, using spare resources of a processing core to try to execute a second process thread. This means that a quad-core Nehalem processor can accept and attempt to process eight threads simultaneously, making it even more massively parallel than the current Core 2 Quad CPUs.

http://www.custompc.co.uk/features/604725/intel-core-i7-and-x58-revealed/page2.html

Asus overclocks Core i7 to 5.4GHz

Posted at: 5:31pm 18th November 2008 by Ben Hardwidge

The R&D guys at Asus show the potential of Intel’s new architecture when using liquid nitrogen cooling

We have to admit that we were pretty chuffed after getting a Core i7 to run at 4.27GHz using just air cooling, but the research and development (R&D) guys at Asus have just shown us what the chip can do if you cool it with LN2, with which they managed to achieve an incredible clock speed of 5.4GHz.

Using a 3.2GHz Core i7 965 Engineering Sample, Asus achieved the overclock using its own X58-based P6T Deluxe motherboard, along with 3GB of OCZ triple-channel RAM. However, the real star of the show appears to be the CPU itself, as the overclock was achieved with a huge 27x multiplier and a 200MHz QPI base clock. While this is a decent enough overclock over the 133MHz default, we overclocked the QPI to 210MHz on the P6T Deluxe in our own tests, and we even managed to get 220MHz out of the Asus Rampage II Extreme (reviewed in Issue 65 of Custom PC), so this isn’t an exceptional achievement for the motherboard.

On a side note, we’re also slightly confused about the 3,600MHz Rated FSB reported in the CPU-Z screenshot (see below), but we assume that this is a quirk of using the current version of CPU-Z on new technology.

While we’re pretty sure that this overclock wouldn’t be stable enough to run through our benchmarks, it’s still a great achievement for an overclock, and just goes to show the potential of the Core i7 architecture for achieving sky-high clock speeds with the right equipment, so hats off to the chaps at Asus.

http://www.custompc.co.uk/news/605205/asus-overclocks-core-i7-to-54ghz.html

China fears job riots

noreply@blogger.com (donya kewarasan) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:04:09 PST

BEIJING, China (CNN) -- China's job outlook is "grim," and the global financial crisis could cause more layoffs and more labor unrest until the country's economic stimulus package kicks in next year, the nation's minister of human resources and social security said Thursday.
Thousands of graduates crowd a jobs fair in Nanjing but vacancies are becoming harder to find.

Thousands of graduates crowd a jobs fair in Nanjing but vacancies are becoming harder to find.

The stimulus package, unveiled earlier this month, will pump $585 billion into rebuilding communities destroyed by the May earthquake, constructing railways, housing, airports and highways, and funding other projects.

China is most concerned about the growing labor unrest, the human resources minister, Yin Weimin, said at a news conference. The increase in unrest has paralleled the increase of business and factory closings and job losses.

Yin noted that in the past two months, some businesses, mainly smaller ones, have been forced to close or suspend production.

Several hundred taxi drivers went on strike Wednesday in Chongqing, in southwestern China, after the government said it planned to put more cabs on the district's roads, thereby increasing competition, the Gansu Daily newspaper said

And about 2,000 people rioted Monday in the impoverished northwestern province of Gansu over plans to move Longnan's city government offices, which were damaged in the May 12 Sichuan earthquake, to a nearby county.

Residents, fearing the change would reduce their property values and threaten their livelihoods, clashed with police and looted government offices, the Gansu Daily reported.

China's manufacturing sector, which produced 14 percent of the clothing, toys and footwear imported into the United States last year, has decelerated rapidly over the past few months, pulled down by a pair of factors.

First, the global economic slowdown and the subsequent drop in consumer spending stymied demand for discretionary goods made in China.

Second, Chinese manufacturers are battling rising labor and material costs at the same time that the yuan's rising value versus the dollar is making Chinese exports to the United States and elsewhere more expensive.

Because of these challenges, more than 65,000 Chinese factories have gone bankrupt this year, said Lan Hailin, professor of business strategy with the South China University of Technology in Guangzhou, China.

And as overseas orders continue to shrink, he thinks the number of bankruptcies will keep rising.

The urban unemployment rate through October this year was 4 percent, lower than the government's projection of 4.5 percent.

But Yin said Thursday the jobless numbers do not include migrant rural workers -- probably the most-affected group -- because they move so frequently. There are about 150 million migrant laborers in China, mostly in cities.

Xinhua said Yin has predicted unemployment will rise in the first quarter of 2009. After that, he said, the stimulus package and other steps China has taken to boost the financial sector should boost employment, according to Xinhua.

China hopes the growth of jobs will then cool down the protests. Until then, China is bracing for more demonstrations.

Meng Jianzhu, minister of public security, was quoted by the BBC as warning police this week to be "fully aware of the challenges brought by the global financial crisis."

He said officers should be careful about how they handle "mass incidents."

from http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/20/china.jobs/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

AMD announces fast, energy-saving chip

noreply@blogger.com (donya kewarasan) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:34:58 PST

Reuters
Published: Thursday, November 13, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Advanced Micro Devices has started selling the new generation of its Opteron quad core processors for servers, AMD announced on Wednesday, nearly one year after Intel launched its own 45 nanometer chip.

After a troubled launch of its earlier Barcelona chip, AMD waited until the new chip, called "Shanghai," was actually in distribution to make its formal announcement.

The chip is called quad core because each core operates as an independent computing device on the same chip. The size historically refers to the smallest feature on a chip.

The Shanghai chip has high energy efficiency, AMD says. For example, it automatically turns off some parts of the chip when they are not in use, even for short periods of time, the company said.

The Shanghai is designed to work well with so-called virtualization, in which space is saved on servers by running separate "virtual" machines across drives, instead of requiring separate drives for each machine.

AMD said that two versions of the chip are available now, with enhanced versions available in early January.

IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and Dell are among 25 systems vendors who will be shipping machines this quarter with the new chip on board, AMD said.

AMD quoted a Hewlett-Packard executive in praise of the new chip. Paul Gottsegen, vice president of marketing for Industry Standard Service, said HP had "experienced unparalleled success over the past four years working with AMD in bringing AMD Opteron processor-based platforms to customers."

The company said that the processors are easier to replace than Intel's. Intel says that is not true.

AMD said it is looking to increase market share with the server. The market intelligence firm iSuppli said it had only 12 percent in the third quarter.

(Reporting by David Lawksy, additional reporting by Georgina Prodhan in London; Editing by Gary Hill)

© Reuters 2008

From : http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/technology/story.html?id=4f703cd5-244d-4904-b550-cf71315c2a87&k=69978

AMD Delivers First 45nm Shanghai Chips Early

By Damon Poeter, ChannelWeb
9:21 AM EST Thu. Nov. 13, 2008
Advanced Micro Devices officially released its first 45-nanometer server chips Thursday, promising the new quad-core Opteron processors, code-named Shanghai, would deliver 30 percent to 35 percent increases in both performance and power efficiency over the previous Barcelona generation of products AMD introduced late last year.

AMD, which had originally planned to launch Shanghai early next year, was able to launch its next-generation Shanghai chips ahead of schedule thanks to an exceptionally smooth validation process that saved AMD a full "silicon spin," said Randy Allen, head of AMD's Computing Solutions Group.

Allen attributed part of the success in getting Shanghai out ahead of schedule to lessons learned from Barcelona, AMD's first quad-core product, which had a glitch at launch that caused about a quarter's delay in its volume ramp.

AMD's transition to the 45nm fabrication process comes about a year after larger rival Intel introduced its first 45nm processors for both servers and desktops, later transitioning its notebook chips to the new process as well. Intel made the leap from 65nm to 45nm by reinventing the metal gate in its transistors, but AMD, working with IBM, chose to pioneer new methods of immersion lithography to achieve its latest die shrink.

AMD, Sunnyvale, Calif., Thursday unveiled the first nine Shanghai processors for two-, four- and eight-socket x86 servers in its Opteron stable. These include five Opteron 2000 series chips ranging in clock speed from 2.3GHz to 2.7GHz and four Opteron 8000 series chips ranging from 2.4GHz to 2.7GHz. All nine quad-core chips are socket-compatible with the previous Barcelona generation and slot into the 75W thermal envelope.

AMD has priced its first Shanghai chips aggressively against the older Barcelona models. The 2.5GHz Opteron 2380, for example, is in the middle of the new Opteron 2000 series stack but costs just $8 more than the fastest Barcelona-class equivalent, the 2.3GHz Opteron 2356, which sells for $690. Similarly, the new 2.5GHz Opteron 8380 costs the same—$1,514—as the older 2.3GHz 8356.

Full product names and prices for the new Opteron 2000 series are: Opteron 2376 (2.3GHz, $377), Opteron 2378 (2.4GHz, $523), Opteron 2380 (2.5GHz, $698), Opteron 2382 (2.6GHz, $873), Opteron 2384 (2.7GHz, $989). The full list of new Opteron 8000 series chips is: Opteron 8378 (2.4GHz, $1,165), Opteron 8380 (2.5GHz, $1,514), Opteron 8382 (2.6GHz, $1,865), Opteron 8384 (2.7GHz, $2,149).

Low-power 55W and high-performance 105W versions of Shanghai are scheduled for release early next year, according to AMD. The chip maker has also confirmed the release of 45nm desktop chips, code-named Deneb, in the first-quarter 2009 timeframe, though some reports have the first Deneb processors hitting the market before the end of this year.

AMD partners such as John Lee, vice president of Advanced Technology Solutions at Milpitas, Calif.-based Appro International, believe Shanghai solidifies the chip maker's hold on the four-socket server space.

"The advantages of four-socket, utilizing the Direct Connect architecture, are huge. With HyperTransport, it makes migration very easy and affordable. Performance scales linearly," Lee said.

"We're very excited to launch general-purpose servers, commodity clusters and supercomputers on Shanghai. Customers are testing Shanghai systems now and they are seeing improved performance while consuming less power," he added.

Meanwhile, microprocessor market leader Intel, Santa Clara, Calif., has its own big product news coming up. The chip giant will officially launch the first three processors built with its new Nehalem micro-architecture early next week.

from : http://www.crn.com/hardware/212002312