HOW TO FIND THE BEST DIGITAL CAMERA

It seems that every month, if not every week, different manufacturers are coming up with the latest digital cameras to entice potential clients. And it's just not working for us!

After spending sizeable amount of time at the mall figuring out which is the best digital camera for us, we finally have enough money to buy for that eye-popping, 7 mega pixel, 10x digital zoom, potable, candy colored, up to 512MB expandable memory of super hi-speed SD memory card and not to mention very portable, (that will be the envy of almost everyone we know). We march to the mall armed with our life savings and lotsa pride in ourselves, when we pass by a new display - an eight mega pixel, up to 1G expandable memory, with built it mic and stereo surround, video playback capable, with 22 scenic modes kind-of-camera. And we sigh because the producer of this amazing gadget claims that this is the best digital camera yet out in the market. And so as we always want to have the best, armed with our life savings and a few credit cards, we buy the "best digital camera." But then again, that doesn't last too long, after two months or so, there's another "best digital camera."

And so it confuses us. What makes a digital camera, the best digital camera?

Well, there are certain factors to consider when looking for the "best digital camera" for us.

MEGAPIXELS. One of the most important features of digital camera to make it into the best digital camera category is its mega pixel property. The higher the mega pixels the better the actual photograph will come out. A mega pixel is equivalent to one million pixels. The resolution of your image is based upon the mega pixel property of your camera. This means that as you enlarge the picture, you would get more detail and less blurry colors.

LCD SIZE. The best digital camera will always have a large LCD to help you frame your subject without having to squint to the viewfinder. This is also helpful when reviewing your images, some cameras enable touch up and editing features with its LCD. A 1.5-inch display is average, a 2-inch LCD display is good, but the best LCD size would be 2.5 inches or higher.

ZOOM. Most digital cameras have both digital and optical zoom. A higher optical zoom is always better than a higher digital zoom. Digital cameras are usually furnished with optical of between 3x to 10x. The better the optical zoom, the higher it climbs up to the best digital camera category.

MEMORY CARD. Always make sure that your memory card is the right one for your digital camera. There are different types of memory card like the xD, SD, Flash card and the likes. And these types of memory cards go with certain types of digital cameras. of course memory storage is also up there in choosing the best digital cameras. Choose the size of memory that you need, if you're a photo junkie, you might need more than 32MB. Memory cards can go up to 1G.

The key point to find the best digital camera is to find one that will best fit you and your lifestyle. Don't just buy the latest or the one that claims they are the best digital cameras out in the market. You wouldn't want to buy a DSLR and use it with your home activities or family outing and have to lug it around?! Or you don't want to buy the latest point and shoot camera when you're serious about being a professional photographer. (Of course, you can use this for starters, but if you're not a novice photographer anymore, you wouldn't want to get this kind of camera.)

Actually, the best digital camera is the one that you will enjoy and use. Not the type that you'll just leave rotting in its box or after a few weeks of usage or so, up there in the attic.

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Duh, It’s A Car Stereo!

Pretty self-explanatory isn’t it? It’s a stereo system in a car, you say. Whoa, hold your horses, it’s not that simple. Although some people like to put home stereos in their cars and vans (out of dire need for some sounds), sometimes it just doesn’t work. Yeah, maybe before it could’ve worked just fine, all you needed was radio and a cassette player (or 8 tracks, for the inner dinosaur in you) so sure, lug those big box speakers into the back seat and you’ll be blaring down the highway. But nowadays there are things like cd players and mp3 players and your popup LCD panels and all that techie knickknack you’d think they’d like to build a home theater system right smack on the console of your van. If you don’t know anything about these things but would like to have some sounds in your car anyway, here are some things to know about a car stereo.

As mentioned above, at first units and speakers from home audio systems and professional markets were just simply installed into vehicles. However, they were not well suited to the extremes of temperature and vibration which are a normal part of the environment of an automobile. Car stereo enthusiasts were not satisfied with the sound quality of regular car sound systems, and with the advent of the CD player, they really had to start modifying some of these home stereos in order to work well in a car environment and voila!, now we have the modern car stereo.

If you have a new car, first hand bought, say from about 90 to present, chances are you already have a “factory” car stereo in your car. It means the car manufacturer already included a car stereo system in your car, unless specified in the car model but most often this is the case. Some car manufacturers make their own car stereos, like BMW which includes a pretty decent car stereo package head unit and speakers. It is a standard which comes with all their cars (which isn’t surprising considering that BMW is included in the league of “luxury car manufacturers”). Or like Mercedes Benz or Volkswagen, they use car stereo systems from a German audio manufacturer called Blaupunkt.

A standard car stereo (also called a head unit) usually includes an auto-reverse tape deck, a cd player and sometimes the optional changer – a device which automatically changes the cd in play. On newer car models, the car stereo can also play mp3s and other digital audo file types like WMA and AAC, whether on a cd or a memory device which can be hooked up to the head unit.

The car stereo head unit is connected to several speakers. Older car models usually just had one speaker mounted underneath the dashboard, pointing through perforations towards the front windshield. The standard for car stereo nowadays is a pair of “tweeters” (used to bring out high treble) on the driver side/front passenger side dashboard, a pair of normal “mid” speakers on both doors, sometimes even the backseat passeger doors if it’s a large car and larger speakers capable of bringing out low ends at the back protion of the backseats.

Your car stereo is probably ok as it is, as car manufacturers ensure that the audio products that come with their cars can handle most dirver’s listening demands. But if you think that what you have isn’t enough, you can always CUSTOMIZE.

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Mobile Multimedia: A New Peak For The Alpine Car Stereo

We all know that brand names matter when purchasing car audio hardware. There are brands that are surely more reputable than others. When you are at the store and they offer choice after choice after choice, suddenly you feel overwhelmed on what really to buy. But you can be assured of one thing, if they offer you an Alpine car stereo you can’t go wrong with it.

Alpine car stereo and electronics, founded in 1978, is a world leader in the industry of high performance mobile electronics. They specialize in mobile multimedia, an integrated system approach incorporating digital entertainment, security and navigation products for the mobile entertainment.

Alpine car stereos are a new breed of units which feature the convergence of high performance audio, video, navigation and telematics in the form of Mobile Multimedia. Navigation systems act as the resource center of the Alpine car stereo Mobile Multimedia lineup. Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), DVD players, Dolby Digital systems, satellite digital audio radio, mobile data linking and communication through telematics devices will be fused with navigation systems to create a platform of products. Mobile Multimedia integrates Alpine's innovative audio, video, security and navigation products, as well as its new GUI for Drivers, human interface and information communications technology.

To grasp what the Alpine car stereo Mobile Multimedia is, take a look at the IVA-D901 Alpine car stereo Mobile Multimedia Station/CD/DVD Receiver/Ai-NET Controller.

The IVA-D901 has 400% more pixels than a conventional in-vehicle display, meaning that it has 1.15 million pixel elements. It has 50W x 4 built-in power and 3 PreOuts (4 volt), SAT Radio ready, a Hard Disc Drive (HDD), and Alpine car stereo Navigation. Key features include:


- 7" Fully Motorized Wide Screen Monitor
- 18W x 4 MOSFET Amplifier
- Built-in Dolby Digital/DTS Decoder
- Bass Engine® Plus
- Subwoofer Level Control
- Bass Center Frequency Control
- Bass Band Width Adjustment
- Treble Center Frequency Control
- Subwoofer Phase Selector
- Bass Type Control
- 4-Ch Digital Time Correction
- 3 Position 12 dB/Oct Crossover
- MediaXpander™
- SAT Radio Ready
- MP3 Text Information Display
- Quick Search Function
- CD/CD-R Playback
- CD Text, Text Display, Text Scroll
- M DAC
- MaxTune SQ Tuner
- 3 Auxilliary A/V Inputs with Remote Control Input
- Dedicated Navigation Input
- Dedicated Camera Input
- 2 Auxilliary Monitor A/V Outputs
- Navigation Audio Mix
- 3 PreOuts (4 volt)
- MM Driver (Hard Disc Drive) Ready
- MobileHub Ready
- Ai-NET Control Center DVD/CD/MP3 Changer Controller
- "Digital Art" Spectrum Analyzer Display
- RUE-4190 Universal Wireless Remote Control Included

If these all seems too much for you, Alpine car stereos also have more conventional head units to offer. The CDA-9835 Alpine car stereo In-Dash CD Player/Ai-Changer Controller lets you fully customize both illumination and sound, with a range of 512 colors and super-versatile Bass Engine functions like digital time correction and parametric EQ. You can download audio parameter settings and connect and control as many as eight amps. The BioLite display, Menu key and rotary knob make operation extremely easy.

Like most Alpine car stereo units, it is also SAT Radio Ready, giving you a much greater choice of listening options than ordinary local AM/FM radio. You can select from among a wide range of music genres, news, sports, and talk programs with digital quality anywhere.

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Manchester United, West Brom, Birmingham Reach League Cup Quarterfinals

Defending champion Manchester United beat Wolverhampton Wanderers 3-2 to advance to the quarterfinals of English soccer’s League Cup.

Premier League clubs Birmingham, West Bromwich Albion and Wigan also moved into the final eight by beating lower-division teams, as did Ipswich of the second-tier Championship.

Javier Hernandez came off the bench to score in the 90th minute to give Manchester United the fourth-round victory at Old Trafford. Bebe and Ji-Sung Park also scored for United, while George Elokobi and Kevin Foley had the goals for Wolves.

Birmingham beat Brentford of League One in a penalty shootout 4-3 after the game finished 1-1 following extra time. Birmingham’s Kevin Phillips scored in second-half stoppage time to cancel out a 68th-minute goal from Sam Wood.

West Brom and Wigan beat teams from the Championship. Simon Cox scored twice to lead West Brom over Leicester 4-1, while goals from Mauro Boselli and Ben Watson gave Wigan a 2-0 win against Swansea. Ipswich came from behind to beat Northampton, which is next-to-last in League Two, 3-1.

The remaining three quarterfinal spots will be filled tomorrow, when Aston Villa hosts Burnley, Arsenal visits Newcastle and Stoke travels to West Ham.

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Glaxo Settles Defective Drug Suit for $750 Million

GlaxoSmithKline Plc agreed to pay $750 million to settle a U.S. government false-claims lawsuit over the sale of defective drugs.

Glaxo, the U.K.’s largest drugmaker, and the U.S. Justice Department announced the accord today, resolving a lawsuit first filed in 2004 by Cheryl D. Eckard, a former global quality assurance manager for the London-based company.

“This is not something I wanted to do, but because of patient safety it was necessary,” Eckard, 51, told reporters following a Justice Department press conference in Boston. As a whistleblower, she will receive $96 million from the settlement money.

Glaxo was accused in court papers of selling tainted drugs under false pretenses. The medicines, made at a Glaxo plant in Cidra, Puerto Rico, were misidentified as a result of product mix-ups, according to papers filed in federal court in Boston. The affected drugs included the antidepressant Paxil CR and the diabetes treatment Avandamet.

The settlement includes a criminal fine and forfeiture totaling $150 million and a $600 million civil settlement under the False Claims Act and related state claims, the Justice Department said in a statement.

“We will not tolerate corporate attempts to profit at the expense of the ill and needy in our society -- or those who cut corners that result in potentially dangerous consequences to consumers,” Carmen M. Ortiz, the U.S. Attorney in Boston, said at today’s news conference.

Guilty Plea

SB Pharmco Puerto Rico Inc., a Glaxo unit, agreed to plead guilty to charges relating to the manufacture and distribution of adulterated drugs made at the now-shuttered plant, the Justice Department said. Glaxo said in July it had agreed in principle with the U.S. to pay 500 million pounds ($791 million) to resolve the investigation.

“We regret that we operated the Cidra facility in a manner that was inconsistent with current Good Manufacturing Practice requirements and with GSK’s commitment to manufacturing quality,” PD Villarreal, a Glaxo senior vice president, said in an e-mailed statement.

Eckard’s take is the largest ever for a single whistleblower, said Patrick Burns, spokesman for Taxpayers Against Fraud, a nonprofit Washington group that publicizes the use of legal means to combat fraud against the U.S. The federal government will receive $436.4 million from the settlement and participating states will split as much as $163.6 million, the Justice Department said.

‘Serious Deficiencies’

Other drugs made at the plant include Kytril, an anti- nausea medication, and Bactroban, an ointment used to treat skin infections, the Justice Department said.

“The false claims arose out of chronic, serious deficiencies in the quality assurance function at the Cidra plant and the defendants’ ongoing serious violations of the laws and regulations designed to ensure the fitness of drug products for use,” the government said in court papers.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2005 seized some Paxil CR lots after it was discovered that the pills sometimes split inappropriately, according to court papers. Some of the pills lacked an active ingredient.

“We did not uncover any evidence that patients were harmed from these adulterated batches,” Ortiz said today. “It is critical we keep pressure on companies to follow FDA standards and play by the rules.”

Eckard’s complaint was joined by the states of California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia, as well as the District of Columbia, Chicago and New York City.

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10 questions to ponder as NBA season prepares to tip off

With near-unparalleled anticipation and keen interest, the 2010-11 NBA season begins Tuesday.

A doozy of a matchup — Big 3 squared — gets it going, too: LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and the Miami Heat against Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and the Boston Celtics (TNT, 7:30 p.m. ET). An Eastern Conference final preview?

Of course, the Orlando Magic will have a say in the matter, too.

Other eye-catching story lines this season:

•Oklahoma City Thunder forward Kevin Durant's emergence as a legitimate MVP candidate.

MORE: Durant's play demands respect

•Forward Carlos Boozer joining guard Derrick Rose and the Chicago Bulls.

•Forward Blake Griffin's attempt to resuscitate the Los Angeles Clippers.

•New York Knicks forward Amar'e Stoudemire's presence in the Big Apple.

•And, oh yeah, that Los Angeles Lakers' run at a three-peat.

MORE: Lakers ready for opener, ring presentation

Seems fantastic.

But all that glitters is not gold.

Stalemated labor negotiations and a potential lockout when the collective bargaining agreement expires after the season could mute the positive vibe and spoil any momentum this season creates.

Commissioner David Stern's just-announced wish to reduce annual player salary costs by at least $750 million has triggered fears of the NBA's first labor stoppage since the 1998-99 season.

Players union executive director Billy Hunter says the league's insistence on a rollback of salaries, a hard salary cap and non-guaranteed contracts "will inevitably result in a lockout and the cancellation of part or all of the 2011-2012 season."

Strong words, but neither side says the negotiating rhetoric will sully what happens on the court. The grousing that plays out off the court, however, won't end anytime soon.

In anticipating the highs and lows of the coming months, here is our take on the 10 questions this season will answer:

1. Will star-studded Heat win it all?

They certainly have the talent with the NBA's best trio in guard Wade and forwards James and Bosh and complementary players such as guard-forward Mike Miller, forwards Udonis Haslem and James Jones and guards Carlos Arroyo and Mario Chalmers.

But it's not that simple. Chemistry, on and off the court, plays a role, and it does not happen overnight.

Continuity — that's the word Heat coach Erik Spoelstra likes to use — hardly has started on the court with Wade missing most of the preseason with a strained right hamstring and swingman Miller out until at least January from a freak thumb injury.

It is not unusual for a team to find out what it takes to win a championship the hard way — going deep into the playoffs and losing and then coming back the following season to win the title.

That might be the Heat's path, and there is nothing wrong with that. But that's not what James, Wade and Bosh expect, nor their fans. Anything less than a title will draw catcalls.

2. Will Phil Jackson get a fourth three-peat and the Lakers a franchise-record third?

As long as five-time champion Kobe Bryant stays healthy, don't bet against them, because this is a deeper team than last season's. The Lakers bring back the same starters with Derek Fisher, Bryant, Ron Artest, Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum (whose recovery from knee surgery will keep him out a while).

Their most glaring weakness last season was their bench, but the additions of point guard Steve Blake, forward Matt Barnes and shot-blocking center Theo Ratliff have bolstered that area significantly. Bryant will be going for his sixth title, which would tie him with Michael Jordan. Motivation enough.

3. Is Oklahoma City a legitimate threat to the Lakers?

Definitely. The Thunder probably are a year away, but depending on how the season breaks, Oklahoma City is good enough to make it happen now. The Thunder not only have youth with scoring champ Durant and point guard Russell Westbrook but also depth and a desire for playing lockdown defense.

To go deep in the postseason, a coach must be able to reach into his reserves to find sparks, such as what James Harden did for the team last season to pull out close games. The Thunder took the Lakers to six games in the playoffs, their first postseason appearance since the franchise moved to Oklahoma City from Seattle (where they were called the SuperSonics).

Now Durant and Westbrook are more seasoned from their experience winning gold for the USA at the world championship. And the Thunder added more shooters with Daequan Cook and Morris Peterson. Starting 6-7 swingman Thabo Sefolosha is a rare commodity who can defend the most challenging skill position on the floor without rotating help from the low post.

4. Which different West teams will make the postseason?

The Clippers, Memphis Grizzlies and Houston Rockets. Maybe even the Sacramento Kings.

The Rockets won 40 games without center Yao Ming; now that he's back, they can go at least 10 deep. Adding Brad Miller as a free agent behind Yao solidifies that position, and their guard play is especially solid after acquiring Courtney Lee. Don't be surprised if they win the Southwest Division for the first time since it was formed in 2004, but with power forward Luis Scola leading the way instead of Yao.

The Grizzlies fizzled late last season, but their success this time hinges on better production from the point guard position and more production from the bench. The Clippers and Kings are bolstered by their recent draft picks at the same time the Utah Jazz (53 wins) and Phoenix Suns (54) lost All-Stars and could take significant dips.

The Denver Nuggets (53 wins), however, could fall the most, with injuries to interior players and the much-discussed possibility All-Star Carmelo Anthony will be traded by the deadline in February.

5. What happens with 'Melo?

The short answer: He will be traded this season. The Knicks and New Jersey Nets seem mighty interested.

Here's the long answer: The Nuggets, Anthony and a willing trade partner are in a conundrum. The Nuggets want something valuable in return. Anthony wants a say in where he goes.

The Knicks would be one step closer to a super team and a threat to join the upper half of the East. The Nets would be better, too, and primed for the future. Both, of course, want assurances Anthony will sign an extension and be with the team beyond this season.

So far, no proposed deal has appeased everyone. A deal looked close just before training camp, and one is still possible soon. But the Nuggets are in no hurry.

The possibility exists Anthony remains with the Nuggets all season and then becomes a free agent, allowing him to sign where he wants.

6. Is Tim Duncan's era with the San Antonio Spurs about done?

Probably. This is the last hurrah for the most dominant small-market franchise — winners of four championships between 1999 and 2007 — in the modern era. Fundamentally sound players such as Duncan, 34, can play at a higher level much longer than those who rely on physical gifts.

Expect him to have another strong season, especially if 25-year-old rookie Thiago Splitter, a 6-11 forward from Brazil, gives the Spurs another low-post presence with DeJuan Blair.

The Spurs showed flashes of that old magic by upsetting the Dallas Mavericks in the first round last season but looked dated while being swept for the first time in franchise history, by the Suns in the conference semifinals. They lacked outside shooting, and this team of 30-somethings can't run.

They need to get younger and faster to compete in the West. By the time they get those pieces in place to make another serious run, Duncan's time will be up.

7. Aren't the Celtics and Magic being ignored?

From a national perspective, the Heat have attracted the most attention. But attention does not win games, and Miami knows it will have to beat at least Orlando or Boston, if not both, in the playoffs to reach the Finals.

The Celtics and Magic made important offseason decisions — Boston with personnel and Orlando with X's and O's.

Adding guard Delonte West and the O'Neal big men (Shaquille and Jermaine) were shrewd moves for Boston. The Celtics look deeper and better than they were last season, especially with Garnett fully recovered from spring 2009 knee surgery and point guard Rajon Rondo that much better.

Magic coach Stan Van Gundy isn't abandoning his pick-and-roll offense, just adding more post plays for center Dwight Howard. Howard's more serious attitude gives Orlando sharper focus.

Both teams are talented and versatile. If the Heat slip, both will be right there.

8. Who will be MVP?

Durant is the hot pick. Coming off a season in which he was the youngest scoring leader in NBA history (then 21) and a summer in which he led Team USA to a gold medal in the world championships, Durant was picked by league general managers to win the award.

The Magic's Van Gundy will again encourage voters to consider his center, Howard.

But is there a really better player than James? He is only 25, a two-time MVP with room to grow. He's also on a team where other areas of his game might improve because he doesn't need to score as much as he did with the Cleveland Cavaliers.

9. Is the new rule on technical fouls a disaster in the making?

Time will tell, although some think the NBA might have gone a step too far.

The NBA has instructed referees to reduce the complaining from players about calls and no-calls by issuing technical fouls. Behavior that previously did not generate technicals will now — such as overt disagreeable gestures, even if it is not directed at a referee.

Some critics argue that cutting back on whining is good. Others say limiting players' emotion and passion is not.

Stern is convinced players will adapt, and he might be right — for the most part. Minor controversies will erupt, Stern argues, but the guidelines will become second nature to the players and referees and a non-topic after a while.

Unless a superstar gets tossed or it affects an important game, critics argue.

10. Will there be a work stoppage? If so, who will come out the winner?

It's more than likely there will be one. The rhetoric late last week from both sides was not a good sign and washed out the good feelings that had come out of previous meetings. But then again, it's not like Stern and Hunter haven't hammered out a deal previously.

Owners are talking of $400 million in losses last season alone, and they point to escalating expenses that dwarf growing revenue.

Stern wants a reduction of $750 million-$800 million in annual salaries — players wouldn't be the first employees to take a pay cut in this economy. Owners will also fight for shorter contracts, a hard salary cap with no exceptions and non-guaranteed deals.

The players have already rejected those ideas. They note that, if owners are in such financial trouble, why are complementary players such as Amir Johnson and Drew Gooden being paid in excess of $30 million in free agency?

Negotiations are expected to get uglier before a deal is reached.

Players prospered in the last collective bargaining agreement. It is unlikely they will prosper in this one, especially if it gets to where games are canceled and a portion of the 2011-12 season is lost.

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Air Force lost some communication with nuclear missiles

Washington (CNN) -- The Air Force lost partial communications with 50 nuclear missiles for almost an hour last weekend, an Air Force spokesman said Tuesday.

The problem, characterized as a "single hardware issue," affected more than 10 percent of the country's ICBM arsenal on Saturday morning, according to Air Force spokesman Lt. Col. Wesley Miller IV.

Because of redundant systems, at no time was the Air Force unable to monitor, communicate with or, if need be, launch the intercontinental ballistic missiles on the president's command, several military officials said.

"Any time the president wanted to fire those missiles, he could have," a senior defense official said. At no time was the public in jeopardy, according to another military official.

The Minuteman III ICBMs are multiple warhead missiles that are controlled from Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming but are in missile silos spread out over a wide area around the base.

After the problem was detected, each silo was inspected by base personnel to make certain all 50 missiles were safe and secure.

The exact nature of the problem is still under investigation.

"The specific cause for the disruption is currently being analyzed on site by engineers from the ICBM systems program office," according to an Air Force statement.

A senior defense official said it was an underground cable that got disrupted.

The United States currently has 450 Minutemen III ICBMs. While the squadron of 50 that had problems Saturday represents 11 percent of America's ICBM arsenal, the United States also has bomber-based and sea-based nuclear weapons.

The Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. Norton Schwartz, informed Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, about the problem during the weekend.

Mullen made sure Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was informed. President Obama was briefed on the issue on Tuesday morning, according to a report in Atlantic Monthly.

Gates takes nuclear weapon security very seriously. In 2008, Gates took the unprecedented step of firing both the Air Force secretary and the Air Force chief of staff because of two highly publicized mistakes involving Air Force nuclear weapons.

First there was the embarrassing revelation in August 2007 that a B-52 bomber took off from North Dakota with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles that no one knew were live weapons until after the plane landed in Louisiana.

Then came word that the Air Force mistakenly shipped fuses that are used in nuclear weapons to Taiwan in 2006 in crates believed to contain helicopter batteries.

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England files bid complaint to Fifa

England's 2018 World Cup bid team files complaint against head of rival Russian campaign after comments about London.

Sorokin, second from right, said he is willing to apologise for the 'misunderstanding' for his comments [GALLO/GETTY]

The England team bidding for the 2018 World Cup has filed a formal complaint with Fifa, football's world governing body, over critical comments made by the head of Russia's rival campaign.

Alexei Sorokin, the chief of Russia's bid for the tournament, was reported in the Russian daily Sport-Express newspaper to have criticised London for high crime rates and binge drinking.

He also accused British media of campaigning against his country's bid. The comments could be found to breach Fifa's rules over criticising competitors.

Sorokin said on Tuesday that he was willing to apologise for the "misunderstanding" over his comments.

He argued, however, that he had not broken any rules.

England's complaint has been made against Sorokin rather than the Russian bid as a whole.

Anti-corruption loophole

The row is the latest in a string of controversies surrounding bids for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups which will both be awarded on December 2.

Switzerland is considering closing a loophole for sporting bodies in its anti-corruption law following allegations of bribery among Fifa officials involved in the bidding process.

Since the accusations surfaced last week, Fifa has promised a zero tolerance approach to unethical behaviour in the contest to host the.

Officials from international sport organisations are not currently covered by Switzerland's anti-corruption statutes.

Anita Thanei, a Social Democrat who heads the Swiss parliament's legal committee, said on Tuesday she would launch a parliamentary initiative for the anti-corruption laws to be amended.

"I expect the measure will find broad support," she said.

"International sporting bodies are acting in the public interest, which is why the public is legitimately bothered when such cases are not punished."

Ueli Maurer, the country's defence minister who also oversees sport, said the justice ministry would look into the matter

"It's about corruption, it's possibly about money laundering, it's about fixing bets, touches doping too," he told Swiss television late on Monday.

Politicians have called for action following news last week that two members of Fifa's executive committee were provisionally suspended on suspicion of selling their votes.

Switzerland is home to dozens of international sport organisations who choose it as a base for its favourable legal framework and tax regime.

Besides Fifa, the European football confederation and the International Olympic Committee are also located there.

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French protests ease ahead of vote

Protests by students and workers against pension reform appear to be losing steam ahead of parliament vote to pass bill.

Protests in France appear to be loosing momentum as the passing of a pension reform bill which they oppose seemingly draws near.

Widespread strikes eased on Tuesday, with rubbish collectors in the southern city of Marseille and employees at three oil refineries going back to work.

Students held protests but in relatively low numbers in comparison to large protests held during the past fortnight.

The bill that will raise France's retirement age from 60 to 62 has already been passed by the senate and is to be voted on by the national assembly, the lower house, The vote, expected on Wednesday, is all but certain to pass.

Union leaders have admitted that with the bill about to become law they will have to change tactic.

"The movement is not finished. It will continue. It will take other forms. The subjects it has raised are not closed, whatever happens in the coming days," Bernard Thibault, head of the CGT union told state television.

Francois Chereque, leader of the CFDT union said that as the parliamentary debate on the bill ends unions would be "looking at it from another perspective".

"We're not calling into question the legitimacy of parliament ... but a law is always perfectible."

Strikes curtailed

Road blocks at the country's largest oil port in Marseille were bulldozed by authorities on Tuesday and rotting piles of trash are expected to be cleared soon, with garbage collectors agreeing to return to work.

Garbage collectors said that they were going back to work for hygiene reasons and due to frustrations of the public, however, they have also not been paid for two weeks while on strike.

Five of France's 12 mainland oil refineries were also said to be back up and running after strikes that shut them down caused major fuel shortages.

Brice Hortefeux, the French interior minister, said there was a "gradual but steady" return to normal supplies to service stations.

Jacky Rowland, Al Jazeera's correspondent in the capital Paris, said: "Because many people feel that the law is now a done deal that really robs them of the incentive to fight.

"But the point that the students and unions have been making is that it is never too late to get the law changed or removed from the statute books. The real question is whether their argument will appeal to people in large numbers."

Unions have already announced two new nationwide protests - for Thursday and November 6.

Millions of people have taken to the streets during the past two weeks in protests organised by unions and students, and the nation grappled with fuel shortages.

Steadfast Sarkozy

Strikes have continued but without the vigour seen last week. On Tuesday a few dozen people from the CNT and SUD Solidaire unions blocked a buses depot in Neuilly Sur Marne, an eastern suburb of Paris.

The blockage stopped more than 50 buses connecting the French capital to its eastern suburbs. Police watched the protesters without any intervention.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, has stood firm throughout the weeks long protest movement, insisting the reform is necessary to save the money-losing retirement system and ensure funds for future generations as life expectancy increases and the nation's debt soars.

Besides raising the minimum retirement age to 62, it increases the age to access full retirement benefits from 65 to 67.

The French finance minister announced that the strikes are costing the national economy up to 400 million euro ($557m) each day, as workers continued to block other oil refineries and some rubbish incinerators.

Polls have shown that most French people support the strikers, however, the conservative Sarkozy's popularity is plummeting.

A poll published in Sunday's Journal du Dimanche newspaper showed that only 29 per cent of those surveyed were satisfied with Sarkozy's performance. It was the French leader's lowest rating since taking office in 2007.

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Somalia tops the most corrupt list

Iraq and Afghanistan among most corrupt nations in the world and United States slips down from top twenty least corrupt.

Somalia is the most corrupt country in the world, followed by Afghanistan, Myanmar and Iraq, an international watchdog has said.

In its annual report released on Tuesday, Transparency International found Somalia to be most corrupt country, topping a list of the 178 countries surveyed.

The international watchdog found almost 75 per cent of the countries to be in the index score below five, on a scale from 10 (very clean) to 0 (highly corrupt).

These findings indicate a serious worldwide corruption problem and highlight the need to make more efforts to towards strong governance structures across the globe.

'Worrying situation'

Edda Mueller, the head of Transparency International's German section, said that the overall international situation was "very worrying".

"There are clear indications that the more unstable a country is, the higher the level of corruption."

And at the other end of the scale, Denmark, New Zealand and Singapore shared the top slot as the least corrupt nations.

They were followed by Finland, Sweden, Canada and the Netherlands.

The study also identified the countries that have successfully fought corruption and have shown an improvement in the rankings.

These include Bhutan, Chile, Ecuador, Gambia, Haiti, Jamaica, Kuwait and Macedonia.

Chile and Uruguay were rated the least-corrupt countries in Latin America, while the best ranking in the Middle East was given to Qatar.

Mueller said that the performance of these countries should serve as hope and inspiration for countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq.

The report found that some countries that were hit hard by the the global economic crisis became more corrupt during the last year. Greece and Italy feature in this category together with the United States, which has dropped its position from 19th to 22nd in the last year.

Transparency International has identified corruption as a major hindrance in fighting major problems like the financial crisis and climate change.

It has advocated stricter implementation of the United Nations Convention against Corruption, the only global initiative that provides a framework for putting and end to corruption.

Transparency International's corruption index is based on 13 different surveys of business people and governance experts conducted between January 2009 and September 2010.

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UN urges WikiLeaks torture probe

UN urges US and Iraq to prosecute those responsible for detainee abuse and unlawful killings in Iraq.

Navi Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, has called on the US and Iraq to investigate allegations of detainee abuse revealed by WikiLeaks.

The whistle-blower WikiLeaks website released nearly 400,000 American military documents on Friday. Many of these documents included reports of serious abuse by Iraqi forces and also showed that US troops did not intervene to stop the violence in many cases.

Pillay said on Tuesday that the information adds to "concerns that serious breaches of international human rights law have occurred in Iraq."

He urged US and Iraq to prosecute all those responsible for the torture and unlawful killings.

Some of the documents released on Friday contain accounts of Iraqi forces abusing Iraqi prisoners and the US military not investigating those instances.

The documents also show that US forces handed over detainees to Iraqi forces despite signs of abuse.

They also show that US interrogators continued to question Iraqi detainees while some of them were still recovering from injuries inflicted upon them during their detention by Iraqi security officials. And in some cases, their wounds were clearly visible to the US interrogators.

US denial

US officials on Monday said the military had not systematically ignored cases of torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners by Iraqi forces.

"That's just not the case," Casey told reporters. "Our policy all along was that where American soldiers encountered prisoner abuse (they were) to stop it and then report it immediately up the US chain of command and the Iraqi chain of command."

Barack Obama, the US president, who opposed the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq launched by his predecessor President George W Bush, formally ended the US combat mission in Iraq in August and has promised to withdraw the last 48,000 US troops from Iraq by the end of next year.

Obama signed three executive orders shortly after taking office, vowing to return America to the "moral high ground" in the so-called war on terrorism.

The implication was that the United States would do more to make sure terror suspects were not tortured or abused - either at the hands of US forces or by governing authorities to whom the detainees were handed over for detention or interrogation.

Yet, in one leaked document from a US military intelligence report filed February 9, 2009 - just weeks after Obama ordered US personnel to comply with the Geneva Conventions - an Iraqi said he was detained by coalition forces at his Baghdad home and was told he would be sent to the Iraqi army if he did not co-operate.

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5 Step Introvert Guide to Getting More Clients from Your Industry’s Top 20 Influencers

When I first became familiar with the professional coaching industry in the late 1990’s, I quickly became a follower of Thomas Leonard, credited with founding the coaching industry as we know it today. One of the suggestions that Thomas offered for growing a new business was to develop a Team 100 List. To complete this list, you were required to brainstorm the names of 100 business owners in various industries with whom you were acquainted who would be willing to help you promote your business, send you referrals, etc. The goal was to share this list with all of your Team 100 members so that you all became ardent referrers of each other’s businesses.

As an introvert, I always found this task overwhelming.

One, I didn’t know that many people across all of those industries. I might be able to fill out a fourth of the list on a good day. Two, having to go out and connect with the other 75% to complete the list was never going to rise to the top of my To Do List because connecting with others doesn’t come easily for me. In fact, I often find the notion quite nauseating.

However, as a business owner, I’ve come to realize that it’s not what I know but rather who I know that will determine my success. Trust me, as an introvert, that is a bitter pill to swallow, as we tend to value knowledge over relationships..:) The reality is that proactively reaching out to marketing partners will create business opportunities that you will otherwise miss.

So, how could I accomplish this same objective but use my introverted strengths? Here’s how introverts can get referrals and more clients from the top 20 influencers in their industry.

1. Create a manageable list. To prevent overwhelm, create a list limited to 10-20 of the top people in your industry with whom you want to develop a relationship. These are people you don’t currently know, but who have the capability of being able to make strong referrals for you to your ideal client or endorse you in some way. Your list might include members of the media, prospective clients, association leaders, industry-leading decision makers, or anyone else you want to include.

2. Keep the list in front of you. Make sure your list is visible to you at all times, whether it is tacked to the wall next to your desk, sits on your computer as a desktop wallpaper, or is visible as a file on your cell phone. By doing this, your list stays top-of-mind at all times. And, if you come up short of 20 influencers, this action will make you take notice of other potential influencers you can add to the list.

3. Get contact info. You can use both online and offline contact methods, so gather the following info for each contact: email address, social networking profile info, blog URL, and snail mail address. Add this info to your contact list.

4. Determine your reach out strategy. Now that you have your list, how and why are you going to contact the person? You could:

–send an email commenting on something you like on their web site

–mail a card offering congratulations on a recent accomplishment

–post a thoughtful response to one of their recent blog posts

–retweet or comment on a social networking update

–respond by email to something that you found interesting in a recent ezine issue

Remember, this is all about making a personal connection. Reach out to your list members in a way that is genuine and authentic for you.

5. Start reaching out daily. Each day, reach out to the top person on your list. Once you’ve completed this, move that person to the bottom of your list, and the #2 person then becomes your new #1. The next day, reach out to your new #1, and then move that person to the bottom of your list. In this way, you’ll continue to rotate through your list, reaching out to each person once every 30 days or so.

In order for this strategy to work for you, it is imperative that you become disciplined and follow through on this task every day.

Look upon your Team 20 list as your “Dream Team” of influencers who could have significant impact on your business through their advice, introductions, and referrals. Follow this strategy daily, increase your sphere of influencers, and watch your client list grow!

Source : sitepronews.com

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Dubai's next black hole?

The United Arab Emirates' new crackdown on business with Iran will no doubt draw applause in Washington but alarm in Dubai.

New regulations preventing transactions with Iranian banks means trade between the two nations has all but come to a standstill in recent weeks, according to those affected.

In 2009 total trade was worth an estimated $12bn, making the oil-rich Arab nation Iran's top trading partner.

But the reality is that only one of the seven emirates that make up the UAE federation has been responsible for the bulk of Iranian trade and is thus regarded as Tehran's backdoor to the West – Dubai.

For years, Dubai has been seen by the West as dragging its feet on rigorous enforcement of UN sanctions - an accusation it always denies.

But Dubai's much publicised debt problems, which required a $20bn lifeline from the emirate of Abu Dhabi next door, has changed the power balance in the UAE.



Abu Dhabi has limited trade with its Persian neighbours across the Gulf and is highly concerned at the prospect of them becoming nuclear-armed. Abu Dhabi is desperate to show the US that it is an ally that can be relied upon.

When the UAE Central Bank (based in Abu Dhabi) moved in June to freeze 41 bank accounts and businesses believed to be linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guard, there were few complaints from Dubai.

Nobody made the case that any of those banned were innocent legitimate companies but the new restrictions don't seem to distinguish between the intended targets of sanctions and those earning an honest living.

So just how much damage will this cause to Dubai's already strained balance sheets? Quite a bit, according to Robin Amlot, managing editor at CPI Financial.

"We're now saying total trade could halve. That's obviously got to hurt, if you knock $6bn in terms of money coming through the emirate off, that's got to cause significant issues for the Dubai economy," Amlot said.

"Over the course of the past couple of years Iran's been steady business and that steady business is now going to go away but it's been the one constant that has carried on throughout the course of the financial crisis."

The hardest hit will be Iranian businesses in Dubai; some have been operating here for decades in what they say is purely legitimate trade.

Over the past six months, I've spoken regularly to Morteza Massoumzadeh from the Iranian Business Council about the changing dynamic he's facing.

His usual positive outlook was clearly waning when I visited him this week. He's hoping for a "miracle" that things might change but warns the economic impact is going to be severe.

"There is no doubt if these circumstances continue for the next six months, hundreds of companies here will close down. Those companies are not necessarily Iranian-owned, they can be of any nationality who established their businesses in this country aiming to supply goods to Iran," Massoumzadeh said.

An ominous cloud on the horizon for anyone hoping Dubai had already weathered the worst of its economic storm.

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Media war: WikiLeaks v the Pentagon

Analysing the media coverage of the latest WikiLeaks release reveals some interesting insights.
It happened on a Friday, the anniversary of the first US casualties of the Vietnam War way back in 1957. It was also the anniversary, in 1964, of French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre’s announcement that he was turning down the Nobel Prize.

It was the day this year that the often shadowy WikiLeaks, chief nemesis of the Pentagon, maybe their worst nightmare - considered perhaps even more dangerous than the Taliban - surfaced again with the largest public drop of secret military documents in history. WikiLeaks is a public web site run by the Sunshine Press, a non-profit group.

WikiLeaks introduced the significance of their immense treasure trove of secrets on their website this way: “The 391,832 reports ('The Iraq War Logs'), document the war and occupation in Iraq, from 1st January 2004 to 31st December 2009 (except for the months of May 2004 and March 2009) as told by soldiers in the United States Army. Each is a 'SIGACT' or Significant Action in the war. They detail events as seen and heard by the US military troops on the ground in Iraq and are the first real glimpse into the secret history of the war that the United States government has been privy to throughout.”

This time around, and unlike the earlier dissemination of what they called Afghan "war logs," they sanitized these documents to remove names that might become targets for retribution. The gesture did not satisfy the Pentagon, which said they would provide aid and comfort to the enemy. Forcibly retired General Stanley McCrystal called the release "sad."

The Los Angeles Times reported, "In addition to the Times, the documents were made available to the Guardian newspaper in London, the French newspaper Le Monde, Al Jazeera and the German magazine Der Spiegel, on an embargoed basis."

The New York Times said it had edited or withheld any documents that would "put lives in danger or jeopardize continuing military operations." It said it redacted the names of informants, a particular concern of the defence department.

The Pentagon had been bracing for the release for months. Fearing more compromises of national security and more embarrassment for practices they wanted hidden, they had set up a WikiLeaks war room staffed with 120 operatives in anticipation.

A special intelligence unit called the Red Cell was involved. The task has been to prod the American spy networks to operate in a cleverer and more intelligent manner. (Ironically, WikiLeaks had leaked some of their internal reports earlier.)

One report dealt with perceptions abroad that the US supported terrorists. Another was oriented toward how to sell support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in Western Europe, counseling that “counting on apathy is not enough."

I can testify to their savvy. I met members of the unit at a University of Westminister conference on war and terrorism in London in September. There were three of them. Two stood out because of their crew cuts and military demeanor. A third was a Muslim woman. They were clearly on a reconnaissance mission probably linked to WikiLeaks detection since it had been reported that English students were helping the covert citizen agency target covert government activities.

I spoke at some length with their leader, an active-duty army major, who told me that his unit in Iraq handled high-value prisoners, including Saddam Hussein. (They escorted him to the hangman, he revealed.) He was very friendly and made no secret of his affiliation but clearly was not at a leftist academic conference to collect footnotes.

As we know now, the Pentagon was unable to stop the release, but may have pressured WikiLeaks not to name names. We may never know what happened until WikiLeaks finds some document about their anti-WikiLeaks operations.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange accused the Pentagon of more than document editing. CNN reported, "The founder of WikiLeaks was denied a Swedish residency permit on Monday and said his whistleblowing website had been cut off by a company that handled many of its donations. Julian Assange blamed the financial cutoff on the US government, which denied any involvement.”

He had earlier intimated the United States might have been behind the other incidents in Sweden that led to his being accused of sexual harassment: so-called "honey pot traps" used in seduction scenarios have always been part of espionage operations.

A week earlier, an American veteran of the Iraq "surge" published an open letter urging the administration to heed the revelations and change its policies.

Josh Stieber wrote:

Dear members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and other willing parties, this is an anticipatory letter aimed to advise you on your response and responsibility for the coming WikiLeaks release, expected on October 23rd. Based on the White House’s response to the last leak about Afghanistan, the temptation seems strong to once again divert attention away from accountability. I write as a young veteran who once fully embraced the concept of a preemptive war to keep my fellow citizens safe and, as President Bush declared, because 'America is a friend to the people of Iraq.' I now hope to preempt your response to the information regarding that war in which I fought.

The full brunt of the US response has yet to be felt. The media outlets that worked with WikiLeaks have a new scoop of unprecedented depth and dimension. Yet the different ways media outlets reported the disclosures reveals continuing media biases against allegations of torture.

The New York Times played up the revelations in a page-one spread but downplayed their meaning writing: "…the Iraq documents provide no earthshaking revelations, but they offer insight, texture and context from the people actually fighting the war".

Not surprisingly, reports of widespread torture that American forces knew about,and in some cases reported with nothing done, is not "earthshaking". Unreported civilian deaths numbering 15,000 are also minimized. The Times devoted more ink to evidence of abuses by Iraqi forces without mentioning most were trained by Americans who were the occupying power. It fleshes out US military allegations of Iranian intervention more than reports of killings by American soldiers, an emphasis that conveniently contributes to the demonization of Iran by American politicians.

Contrast this with the Guardian coverage which called its package "Iraq: The War Logs," and goes high with revelations of "serial detainee abuse" and "15,000 [previously] unknown civilian deaths".

The Times approach infuriated writer Rob Beschizza, who came up with what he called "The New York Times Torture Euphemism Generator".

"Reading the NYT's stories about the Iraq War logs, I was struck by how it could get through such gruesome descriptions -­ fingers chopped off, chemicals splashed on prisoners ­- without using the word 'torture.' For some reason the word is unavailable when it is literally meaningful, yet is readily tossed around for laughs in contexts where it means nothing at all."

Oddly, the New York Times-owned Boston Globe had no reservations in using torture in its headline.

The New York -ased Columbia Journalism Review surveyed global coverage and, weirdly, criticized Al Jazeera for a video it produced: "All in all, Al Jazeera's coverage of the secret files is straightforward, except perhaps for a six-and-a-half minute documentary video posted prominently throughout the site, a video that is awkwardly edited and features weird, cable-TV-style reenactments and dramatic readings of some of the reports." This condescending comment betrays a lack of insight into the differences between TV coverage and newspaper formulas.

While all of the press seems to be reporting the story, few media outlets are going back to their own coverage and acknowledging how they had failed at the time, to report many of the atrocities we now know the US military knew about, and covered up. One glaring example: the killings that took place in Fallujah, where Al Jazeera correspondents were banned.

Much of the media, as we now see, especially leading American media outlets, were complicit in a multi-year cover-up of truths and crimes that continue to this day, not just in Iraq or Afghanistan, but in our living rooms at home.

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Sudan warns of civil war over Abyei

Sudan's UN envoy warns against any attempt to hold the Abyei vote without a deal on unsettled issues.

Sudan's UN ambassador has warned that conducting a January 9 referendum in Abyei without settling voting rights for competing tribes, as well as the border, will lead to war.

"It is evident that any attempt to conduct the plebiscite before achieving an acceptable settlement between the two parties will mean only a return to war," Daffa-Alla Elhag Ali Osman told a Security Council debate on Sudan on Monday.

The Abyei ballot - scheduled for the same day as people in south Sudan decide whether to opt for independence - is for the people of Abyei to decide whether to remain in north Sudan or join the south.

The separate referendums in southern Sudan and the Abyei region are part of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement reached in 2005, which ended the two-decade old Sudan civil war and left more than two million dead.

Preparations for both votes are way behind schedule, and many Western nations fear conflict if the referendums are delayed.

Status of the Abyei region

New US-brokered talks between Abyei and the Khartoum government, due to start in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Wednesday, have been called off.

The Sudanese ambassador said his government wanted negotiations on the referendums to lead to peace, "not to war, which we have never willingly accepted."

No referendum commission has been set in disputed Abyei and the region's leaders have failed to reach an accord with the Khartoum government on either who is eligible to vote or Abyei's borders.

Local tensions in Abyei, where oil fields are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, have heightened worries over the dispute with Khartoum. The territory is dominated by the Dinka Ngok tribe - who support south Sudan - and Arab Misseriya nomads who migrate with their cattle through the region's rich pastures.

UN concerns

The referendum law gives voting rights to the traditionally southern-supporting Dinka, leaving it up to a commission to decide whether "other Sudanese" are considered residents of the region and can also vote.

The Misseriya have threatened to carry out acts of violence in the district if they are not allowed to vote.

Khartoum's warning comes as the UN peacekeeping chief told the Security Council on Monday that reinforcing the UN force in Sudan cannot prevent hostilities between the north and the south if tensions continue to rise.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, said the southern Sudan commission must now work "extremely quickly" if it is to get a vote ready on time.

He also said he was "deeply concerned" about events in the oil-rich Abyei region.

"The continued lack of progress is exacerbating an already tense and volatile situation on the ground," Ban said on Monday in a report to the Security Council.

Peacekeeping efforts

UN peacekeeping chief Alain LeRoy told the Security Council that the UN mission in Sudan (UNMIS) was considering redeploying troops from the rest of the country to the north-south frontier or calling for international reinforcements.

He said any redeployment would weaken the UN peacekeeping mission in the rest of Sudan but added that "any increase in the number of troops would not enable UNMIS to prevent or contain a clash on the frontier."

"Our best available tool against a return to war remains our commitment in favour of a political agreement ... of the parties on the key pending issues," he said.

LeRoy said there had been no "major military mobilisation" but added that it was "urgent" that progress is made in Abyei talks.

Sudan's UN ambassador spoke out against a reinforcement saying it would be a waste of resources that would not help ease tensions.

Additionally, UN officials have said it would be almost impossible to get significant numbers of new troops to Sudan in time for the referendum.

"The stakes are undeniably high, as failure to meet the deadline for the referendums prescribed by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement could have severe consequences," the UN secretary-general added.

With the south and the north accusing each other of a military build-up on the shared frontier, the UN mission in Sudan UNMIS has already stepped up monitoring along the border and reinforcing "hotspots".

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Your Options in USB External Hard Drives

When speaking of computer technology, there is one aspect that is almost impossible to overlook. It has become so commonplace that it has been accepted as the norm. This is USB technology, a method designed to allow peripheral devices to connect seamlessly with desktop computers and laptops. In fact, this technology has become so widespread that many people do not remember a time before USB was available. However, in order to understand the changes in this connection technology, as well as new developments on the horizon, it is important to delve into the history of computer connectivity.

Ancient History

Once upon a time, peripheral devices (mice, keyboards, storage devices, printers, etc.) all connected to a computer in different ways. Keyboards connected with a round connector, as did mice. Printers used an LPT (parallel) connector. Each of these had to have a connection spot on the back of a computer. In addition, each had to have its own card seated in a slot on the motherboard.

One of the more immediate problems created by these different types of connectors was the fact that there was really no standard means of connecting different peripherals. This meant pain and frustration for computer users, as well as difficulty in finding the right peripherals for their machines.

Another problem here was a lack of transfer speed for data from a peripheral to the host computer. Consider digital cameras for instance. As these devices became more commonplace, the need to transfer image data from the camera to the computer in a timely manner became more acute. The same can be said for modern printers and other peripheral devices.

The Beginning of A New Era

In 1996, things began to change. This marked the debut of USB 1.0. While the original USB technology wasn’t particularly fast, it did offer some benefits. It allowed numerous types of peripherals to connect to a computer via the same type of connection. This replaced a host of serial and parallel ports on the computer, helping to lead to a more streamlined, functional device.

Of course, USB 1.0 didn’t last very long. In fact, in 1998, USB 1.1 appeared, which offered enhanced data transfer speeds. Over time, this connection type became the standard for a vast variety of peripheral devices. Consider for a moment the number of devices that you connect to your PC or laptop with a USB cord. You might connect your cell phone, your mouse, your keyboard, an external hard drive or a monitor. Almost anything can be connected via this method in the modern world.

However, one of the most important developments that USB enabled was that of modern mass storage. You are not doubt familiar with thumb drives, but external hard drives have made use of this technology for a long time, as well. This is an important evolution in the technology world, as it has provided consumers around the world with a simple, easy means of storing their data securely, in a portable device.

The Advent of USB 2.0

April 2000 marked another milestone in USB technology. This was the release of USB 2.0. Compared to USB 1.0, the new generation offered numerous advantages to consumers. However, one of the most important was an increase in data transfer speeds.

Older 1.0 applications were limited to 1.5 MB/s. However, USB 2.0 was capable of delivering (theoretically) speeds of up to 480 MB/s. Of course, this was not exactly accurate, as much of the speed was lost in overhead communications between the USB controller and the host computer. However, there was a significant amount of speed gained with the new technology.

As USB 2.0 matured, more and more devices began to make use of the technology. While USB 1.0 laid the groundwork for this evolution, the new generation saw it come to fruition. In fact, during the reign of the second generation, it seemed like almost any peripheral a consumer could need was available with this connection type. This was most obvious in the number of external hard drives that became available with it. In fact, 2.0 remains the industry standard to this day, though things are beginning to change once again.

The Future of USB Technology

In 2008, a new USB technology was developed. USB 3.0 was announced by the industry. However, it was not until early 2010 that the first consumer devices were developed that made use of this new technology. What does this mean for consumers? What differences exist between the two types of USB technology?

First, because USB 3.0 is still quite new, there are numerous computers on the market that do not have the capabilities to use it. For instance, a laptop manufactured in late 2009 would still have USB 2.0 connectivity. However, most manufacturers began offering USB 3.0 connections on their devices built during the late first quarter of 2010. Of course, this technology is backward compatible with older computers, but in order to realize all the benefits offered by this new development, the host computer, the cable and the peripheral device must all be USB 3.0 compliant. What benefits can be found here?

The first benefit is a dramatic increase in data transfer speed. Where USB 2.0 offered 480 MB/s, the new generation offers a raw throughput rate of 4 GB/s. This is an incredible increase in transfer speed, and was designed to help with high-definition multimedia files, as well as better backup speeds for external hard drives and other mass media storage devices.

Another benefit found with USB 3.0 is the fact that it allows two-way communication. In older applications, all communication had to be initiated by the host computer. However, with 3.0 technology, the peripheral can initiate communication with the host computer.

An important note about the newest version of USB technology is the fact that it challenges eSATA connection types. For some users and manufacturers, eSATA has become the best option, but new USB technology promises to challenge this with comparable data transfer speeds, as well as wider applicability. In short, more devices can use USB 3.0 than eSATA connections, including external hard drives, TVs, Blu-Ray players and numerous other options.

source : sitepronews.com

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French strike 'costing billions'

Finance minister gives warning that long-running action against pension revamp is costing country up to $562m a day.

Oil-refinery workers around the country have been on strike for more than a week over the pension overhaul [AFP] Long-term action against an overhaul of France's pension system is threatening to derail the economy and could be costing as much as $562m a day, the government has said. Christine Lagarde, the finance minister, gave warning on Monday that an estimated 200 to 400 million euros was being lost each day as workers continue to go on strike. "Today, we shouldn't be weighing down this recovery with campaigns that are painful for the French economy and very painful for a certain number of small and medium-sized businesses," she told Europe 1 radio. She said that images broadcast around the world of demonstrators clashing with riot police and of industrial sites blocked by protesters had cost France in terms of its international image for investors. "It's the attractiveness of our territory that's at stake when we see pictures like that," she said. Lagarde said that the ongoing strikes at refineries and fuel depots were also taking a toll. "It's obvious that the petrochemical sector in particular, which needs large supplies of hydrocarbons, is suffering." Sarkozy popularity dives Unions and students have been holding strikes for more than a week in an attempt to pressure the government to scrap plans to raise the age of retirement from 60 to 62. Politicians are expected to sign the bill, which the government says is necessary to save money in the face of a deficit crisis, into law this week, after the French senate approved it last Friday. Despite raids by riot police last week, France's 12 refineries were blocked again on Sunday, as were ports in Marseille and Le Havre, where dozens of tankers are still anchored. Workers voted to end a strike at one of the fuel depots on Monday, the AFP news agency reported, while Reuters said long-running raily sector strikes were beginning to wane. Some 9,000 tonnes of rubbish has also piled up on the streets of Marseille, a Mediterranean port city and its suburbs, due to garbage collectors joining the strike. Ongoing demonstrations have brought millions onto the streets, and open-ended walkouts by railway and petroleum workers have wreaked havoc on commuters and travellers. Polls have shown the vast majority of French people support the strikers. Another survey, published in Sunday's Journal du Dimanche newspaper, showed that only 29 per cent of the 1,828 people questioned were satisfied with the performance of Nicolas Sarkozy. That was down three per cent from September and was the French president's lowest rating since taking office in 2007. It was also among the lowest approval ratings of any French president in recent memory, the newspaper said.

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WikiLeaks: An inside perspective

The latest release from WikiLeaks reveals few surprises, contrary to the views of some who suggest otherwise.

The greatest potential harm in the release of these documents is not in the documents themselves, but in the tendentious interpretations being provided by some [EPA]

At the bottom of most classified documents produced by the US government, tens of thousands every day, there appears in small print an indication, to those who understand the nomenclature, as to when that document is to be automatically declassified. Even where such markings are missing, there is an expectation that the document’s contents will eventually be revealed. Depending upon the classification level and type of document, it could be released in as few as 10 years, or remain sequestered for as many as 50.

Documents specifically requested by outside parties under the Freedom of Information Act, of course, are eventually reviewed and often selectively declassified in even less time. But virtually every properly-classified document in US government hands carries within it the reminder that no secret can or should last forever, there is no justification for it to remain in darkness.

We would do well to remember that as we focus on the much-anticipated and much-ballyhooed release of the second installment of what we might call the WikiLeaks Trove. This time the release involves nearly 400,000 classified military documents detailing US military activities and events in Iraq over a five-year period from 2004 to 2009, hailed as the largest single leak of classified military documents in history.

For public-spirited observers, there are at least two things to consider: The significance of the documents themselves, and the significance of their release.

In any such assessment, it should be noted that at this point, we are largely forced to rely on the initial, partial analyses provided by a few news organizations, including Al Jazeera, which were granted pre-release access to these documents. For a deeper understanding we will have to await a more exhaustive review – if any have the energy to perform it.

As with the previous WikiLeaks release of over 90,000 documents concerning Afghanistan, the sheer overwhelming volume of detailed information contained in this latest windfall has its own fascination. Stalin is alleged to have said that: “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” For those with no direct experience of the bloody mayhem which has characterized much of Iraq for long periods since the US invasion, daily accounts of mass-casualty incidents overwhelm the capacity to grasp or to feel. A single report, however, of a seemingly needless death at a Coalition checkpoint, even in the antiseptic prose of a hurriedly-prepared military report, has the capacity to focus the mind on the horror, the tragedy, and the brutal capriciousness that have characterized this struggle, and indeed all wars.

That said, and again much like the Afghan release, the overall outlines of the story these documents reveal include few surprises – the efforts of some to suggest otherwise notwithstanding. Indeed, the greatest potential harm in the release of these documents is not in the documents themselves, but in the tendentious interpretations being provided by some.

Much, for example, is made of the fact that the US military did indeed compile counts of civilian deaths in Iraq, despite former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s claimed refusal to do so in 2003, and the military’s demurrals over the reliability of its numbers since. In fact, however, this is no great revelation: The fact that the military has been providing rough estimates of civilian deaths to Congress, at the latter’s insistence, since 2005 is well-known. The military has never considered its methodology to be comprehensive, though, and has cautioned Congress that their estimates are mere “signposts,“ and not definitive.

The latest release from WikiLeaks, above all else, concentrates the mind on the horrors and chaotic disorder of military conflict [EPA]

Part of the reason for both the incompleteness of their counts and their reluctance to discuss them is another fact being overlooked by some, and that is that the vast majority of the 66,000 Iraqi civilian deaths estimated in the leaked documents to have occurred were the result of Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence, and did not involve US or Coalition forces. While many may lay ultimate responsibility for the vicious Sunni-Shi’a “sectarian-cleansing” that occurred in greater Baghdad, and the mass-casualty terrorist bombings of Al Qa’ida in Iraq, for example, at the feet of the Americans for having overthrown Saddam and thus having released these pent-up forces in the first place, that is a very different argument, and one often left misleadingly vague.

Similarly, the fact that significant numbers of Iraqi civilians were killed through “escalation of force” incidents at US/Coalition checkpoints and as a result of contact with US convoys is hardly new. The figure of 681 civilians killed in such incidents is both striking and disturbing, but simply underscores the fact that manning checkpoints with conventional troops ill-equipped by training and doctrine to perform what are essentially police duties, in the midst of a population they ill-understand and with which they generally cannot communicate effectively, and in an environment characterized by constant suicide bombings and vehicle-borne explosive attacks in which every civilian is viewed as a potentially deadly enemy, taken together, is a prescription for a slow-rolling disaster.

Given that some 14,000 escalation-of-force incidents occurred across Iraq during this period, the wonder is that there were not more mistaken killings. The fact is, however, that circumstances have been as much a culprit as the claimed “brutality” of the US “occupiers.” While that may not absolve the US military of its responsibility for these deaths, the initial accounts I have seen are largely devoid of thoughtful analysis as to how and why they have occurred.

Perhaps most disturbingly, there are the claims that while newly-empowered Iraqi security forces of all stripes routinely engaged in torture and mistreatment of detainees, US forces “were not allowed to intervene” to stop them, thus making them accessories to abuse. These, too, are highly misleading assertions, and deserve a much more rigorous analysis. In fact, the documents in question seem to substantiate that in those rare instances where US military personnel encountered Iraqi counterparts actively engaged in prisoner abuse, they did indeed intervene to stop it. The question, then, would be what to do next.

In the vast majority of the roughly 1,300 incidents catalogued in the documents, US personnel saw not torture, but evidence of torture: Detainees with obvious marks of abuse, the presence of torture instruments, or credible complaints of abuse by the detainees themselves, for example. In such instances, the protocol was for US forces to report such indications in their own chain of command, and to leave it to their superiors to raise such issues with Iraqi officials whose formal responsibility it was to investigate such reports.

It seems disingenuous to me to suggest that the fact that few such investigations were ever conducted is the fault of the Americans. There is more than a little irony in the fact that it is precisely those who are most likely to characterize the US military presence in Iraq as an unwanted military occupation, trampling on the sovereign rights of Iraqis, who in this instance suggest that US military personnel should have behaved like colonialists. In dealing with an Iraqi system in which abuses by security forces were rampant at all levels, what were US forces to do, practically speaking? Should they have taken over every suspect police station? Should they have indicted and tried those suspected of prisoner abuse? In whose courts?

Finally, there is the question of the impact of the release of the documents per se, quite apart from what any of them reveal. That is very difficult to assess, without having much greater familiarity with the documents than I can command. In any case, it surely is not conducive to morale or good order for those charged with writing clear and truthful reports to live with the nagging fear that what they write is liable to be revealed publicly in a manner designed to provide ammunition to ones detractors, or in a way which could expose friendly elements to risk.

I have written in the recent past about the harm caused by leaks of properly-classified information. By and large, the harm to legitimate interests lies in the sensitive details such leaks reveal. In this case, I think it is generally fair to say that the harm, such as it is, lies not in the details, but in the aggregate picture these documents provide. That suggests to me a generally low degree of potential harm. I strongly suspect that there would be a point in the relatively near future when such documents, doubtless with some exceptions, could be properly turned over to historians and others to provide a dispassionate look at the reality of the US engagement in Iraq.

Whoever was responsible for turning these documents over to WikiLeaks has clearly advanced that process, and done so illegitimately. In the context of the rapidly changing US role and mission in Iraq, however, it is likely that these revelations will do little lasting harm, beyond that caused by the events which they describe.

Robert Grenier is a retired, 27-year veteran of the CIA's Clandestine Service. He was the director of the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Centre from 2004 to 2006.

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Villarreal keep Real in sight

Cani and Rossi on target to beat Atletico 2-0 in Spain while Feyenoord suffer record 10-0 thrashing in Dutch league.

Goals from Cani and Giuseppe Rossi gave Villarreal a 2-0 victory at home to Atletico Madrid which moved them up to second in the Spanish Primera Division on Sunday.

Away from Spain, honorary mention went to former European champions Feyenoord, who suffered their worst-ever defeat in the Dutch league with a 10-0 thrashing by PSV Eindhoven.

Villarreal, who have played some of the best football in Spain this season, took the lead against another side expected to be pushing for a top four finish, after a superb run and pass from Brazil striker Nilmar in the ninth minute.

Midfielder Cani profited to score with a neat touch and Italy striker Rossi twisted and turned in the area, beating three defenders, to net inside the near post after 52.

Villarreal climbed to second with 19 points from eight matches, one behind unbeaten leaders Real Madrid, who hammered Racing Santander 6-1 at the Bernabeu on Saturday.

Champions Barcelona are third on goal difference after their 2-0 victory at Real Zaragoza, also on Saturday.

Early pacesetters Valencia slipped to fourth with 16 points one ahead of Espanyol, who earlier kept pace with the top sides after a 2-1 victory at home to promoted Levante, thanks to goals from Jesus Datolo and Jose Callejon.

Atletico dropped to eighth with 13 points one behind Sevilla, who came out on top in the game of the day at the Sanchez Pizjuan where Luis Fabiano and Frederic Kanoute each scored twice in a thrilling 4-3 win over Athletic Bilbao.

Brazil striker Luis Fabiano, who has struggled for form this season, scored his first league goal of the campaign in the 35th minute and, after Mali's Kanoute had scored from the penalty spot, made it 3-0 early in the second half with a cool lob.

Bilbao's Spain striker Fernando Llorente continued his recent run of form by scoring twice in quick succession, in the 74th and 77th, with the hosts down to 10 men after a red card for Fernando Navarro.

A disputed penalty scored by Kanoute again, 10 minutes from time, appeared to have restored some order until a stoppage-time header from Bilbao's Igor Gabilondo set nerves jangling again among the home fans.

Elsewhere, Getafe beat Sporting Gijon 3-0 and Osasuna won by the same scoreline against Malaga, while the pressure remained on Almeria coach Juan Manuel Lillo after his side could only draw 1-1 at home to promoted Hercules.

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