Standing in the way of control!

I have long been a fan of Delicious bookmarking service. One thing I did find strange though was its dated look. Good news then on its new look, that was launched an hour ago…

YAY! The long awaited, much promised, never delivered Delicious 2.0 will launch in the next few minutes, just like they promised again last week.

The new Delicious is just like the old Delicious, except for the way it looks. They’re also promising that it will be “faster, easier to learn,” and “hopefully more desirable.”

Speed: We’ve moved to a new infrastructure that makes every page faster. This new platform will enable us to keep up with traffic growth while ensuring Delicious is responsive and reliable. You may not have noticed, but the old backend was getting creaky under the load of five million users.

Search: We’ve completely overhauled our search engine to make it faster and more powerful. Searches used to take ages to return results; now they’re very quick. The new search engine is also smarter, and more social: you can search within one of your tags, another public user’s bookmarks, or your social network. Now it’s easier to take advantage of the expertise and interests of your friends, not to mention the Delicious community at large.

Design: Finally, we’ve updated the user interface to improve usability and add a few often-requested features (such as selectable detail levels and alphabetical sorting of bookmarks). Our goal has been to keep the new design similar in spirit to the old one, so all of you veterans should be able to jump in without any confusion. At the same time, we’re hoping that newcomers to Delicious will find it easier to learn.

Read on at TechCrunch

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The world’s oldest joke has been traced back to 1900BC:

LONDON (Reuters) - The world’s oldest recorded joke has been traced back to 1900 BC and suggests toilet humor was as popular with the ancients as it is today.

It is a saying of the Sumerians, who lived in what is now southern Iraq and goes: “Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.”

It heads the world’s oldest top 10 joke list published by the University of Wolverhampton Thursday.

A 1600 BC gag about a pharaoh, said to be King Snofru, comes second — “How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh to go catch a fish.”

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[REUTERS]

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Though the following article is based on the USA system, I can say that, from working in Criminal Courts, it contains some good pointers which are universally applicable…

Are you one of the approximately 35 million people who receive a traffic ticket each year?

Of the 5% that are actually contested, one half are dismissed. The remaining half usually enjoyed reduced fines or other plea bargain arrangements that were less than the original mail in fine amount. Since you are reading this you may be one of the small and silent minority who successfully fights a ticket each year.

Unless you get a contempt of court charge for some outrageous behavior, your fine will be exactly what you would have mailed in originally. You will only be out your time invested. Remember, it’s not just the fine but also the increased insurance premiums you’re trying to save with your time investment.

A recent study by an attorney specializing in traffic tickets showed that 60% of his contested cases were won. Of that amount, over 40% were won by lack of prosecution - No Officer = Not Guilty. An additional 25% were won through the inability to prove the charges.

As you can see, just by going to court and contesting your ticket, the odds are swinging in your favor.

It is important to remember that traffic laws and codes differ from state to state and are constantly changing. You must do your homework to insure that you are current in all matters relevant to your particular situation. In addition, the information in this Guide is intended as basic strategies and tactics. Consider this Guide as your game plan, but you still need to get in there and pitch. This Guide is NOT LEGAL ADVICE.

When the officer approaches your vehicle he will likely ask you one of two standard questions:

1. Do you know why I stopped you?
   Your response is, “No officer, I don’t.”
2. Do you know how fast you were going?
   You have three levels of response:
   “I’m not really sure.”
   “The speed limit, I think.”
   “I wasn’t speeding and I checked my speedometer right before you stopped me.”

The key element here is not to admit anything. You have a right to remain silent but the officer isn’t required to advise you of this right (Mirandize). Do not respond by saying, “Well I think I was doing about 62 when you know you are in a 55 mph speed limit. This is called admitting your quilt!

When the officer asks for your license, registration and proof of insurance tell him where they are located and ask to get them before reaching for anything. If you are in a state which allows concealed weapons, by all means notify him of the weapons location. If your documents are in the glove box or console, get them and close the compartment. This way the officer isn’t worried about you reaching in for an illegal weapon while he is writing your citation.

This brings us to the request for a vehicle search. If the officer asks permission to search the vehicle he doesn’t have any probable cause. Under no circumstances agree to this search. If he threatens to get a search warrant, politely tell him to go ahead and get one. The crucial element here is probable cause. The officer must have probable cause prior to the search. If your vehicle has smoke pouring out and smells like a Cheech and Chong reunion, he will search without asking. The same is true if you have alcohol on your breath. In either of these cases you have some other serious issues that you are about to come face to face with other than your speeding ticket.

It is also important to remember that this is not the time to plead your case or argue the issue. You are trying to stay low profile and arguing or giving some lame excuse that the officer has heard 200 times is not getting you anywhere. You should realize that as soon as his pen hits the ticket book he is committed to issuing the citation. He can’t void out the ticket and say he made a mistake. Once he starts to write, the citation is yours to keep.

While the officer is writing your citation (usually back at his vehicle) it is time to start your defense process. Begin to assimilate as much data as possible. Small details are essential. These are the kind of things that the officer will not remember when it comes time to appear in court. Some of the basic information you should be trying to gather is as follows:

1. Make, model, license plate number and unit number of the officer’s car.
2. Note your exact location and try to determine the distance between where you stopped and where the violation occurred.
3. Even though your citation will list the basic weather conditions, make note of all the weather conditions such as temperature, wind, cloud cover, etc.
4. Note any passenger names and be sure that your passengers remain totally silent during the entire stop unless they are asked a specific question.
5. Make note of your shirt or coat color.
6. Make note of any distinctive characteristics about your vehicle such as any noticeable dents, two tone paint, mag wheels, etc. Again, you are after as many small details as possible.
7. You also need to remember and note everything the officer said during the stop. If he talks on his personal radio during the stop, try to note these items as well. A lot of times the officer who stops you will not be the officer who was running the radar unit. It is crucial to your case that you establish this point.
8. Note the current traffic conditions and remember the surrounding traffic at the time you were pulled over. If you were surrounded by a sea of traffic try to remember anything and everything about that sea of traffic.

When the officer returns with your citation he will generally ask you to look it over and sign it. This signature, as the officer will explain to you, is not an admission of guilt but an acknowledgement of actually receiving the citation. Before you sign the citation, ask to have your court appearance moved to the county seat. This option is not always available but should be pursued. If the officer refuses, politely ask him to note your request and his refusal on the citation. If he again refuses, sign the citation and keep quiet. You can make your own notes later.

After you sign the citation, ask the officer if you can see the radar read out. The officer isn’t required to do this due to your own safety. The police department doesn’t want you run down by a passing motorist while you were heading back to the squad car to look at the radar. If the officer allows you to view the radar, make no comments whatsoever. Do try to make a note of the manufacturer or model number. Under absolutely no circumstances should you ask to see the calibration fork. That is a major red flag that you know the ins and outs of radar and you are going to fight the citation. You have now moved into the memorable category and that’s counterproductive to your case. After the officer returns to his car, stay at the scene making notes for no more than two minutes if he remains at the scene. He will usually be making notes on the back of his copy of the citation. Again, do not make yourself memorable by staying at the scene until the officer leaves. Your fight has just begun and there will be plenty of time to prepare your case without waiting at the scene. It is accessible 24 hours a day for you to study.

As you pull away from the scene, do so calmly and safely. Spinning tires and slinging gravel across the officer’s hood are not a good ideas. Head out with the confidence that you will likely never see the officer again since the odds favor him not showing up at your final court date. Then again, there is also the satisfaction of knowing that the next time you face the officer it will be in a courtroom with him under oath answering your questions. If you adhered to the information discussed above, you will be no more than another of a string of citations he wrote in the past month. Smart money bets he darn sure won’t know what color shirt you had on or how windy it was.

Fight, Plea or Pay
Now that you have your citation in hand it is time to decide if you are going to Fight, Plea or Pay. Remember, even if you fight and loose, your fine is no higher than you would have paid initially. You also need to weigh the fact that you will be paying the fine plus the added insurance premiums. If you’re still in doubt, here a the most common reasons why people choose to fight their citation and have their day in court:

• I can’t afford or don’t want to pay the fine.
• I don’t want the ticket on my record.
• I can’t afford the points on my license.
• I didn’t do anything.
• OK, I did do it but everyone else was doing it too.
• The officer was a major jerk and I want pay back in court.

If you fit into one of these scenarios, it’s time to move forward and start your long trip down the halls of justice.

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WASHINGTON – The Internet is where we spend more and more of our time. But for a growing number of people, it’s an out-of-control habit instead of a necessary part of life.

Internet addiction — an online-related compulsive behavior that interferes with normal living and causes severe stress on family, friends, loved ones and work — is a psychological and behavioral problem that is spreading around the world, experts say.

Kimberly Young, clinical director of the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery and author of the book “Caught in the Net,” said that about 5 percent to 10 percent of Americans –15 to 30 million people — may suffer from Internet addiction. And the problem may be even greater elsewhere. Young said 18 to 30 percent of the populations of China, Korea and Taiwan, where the Internet is even more popular than in the U.S., may be addicted.

“I’ve seen a lot of growth in the field of Internet addiction,” said Young. “More research and studies (are) trying to understand it better. … It’s a global problem.”

The main types of Internet addiction are cybersex, online affairs, online gambling, online gaming, compulsive surfing and even eBay addiction, Young added.

An article by Dr. Jerald J. Block in the March issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry stated that “Internet addiction appears to be a common disorder.”

Centers specializing in Internet addiction have been created to offer treatment.

Coleen Moore, coordinator of resource development at the Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery, said she has clients from college age to early adulthood who spend 14 to 18 hours a day online.

But Young noted that it’s not just how long people spend using a computer, it’s what they’re doing online.

“A lot of people can use the Internet, like alcohol, and not be addicted, but when they lose the control, [then] it becomes an issue,” she said. “You’re not looking at how much time do you spend online but at the quality of how that is affecting your life.”

To help people with their diagnosis, Young developed a test that uses a 20-question survey to measure levels of Internet addiction.

“There are no real drugs for this yet,” she said. “It’s not about medication, it’s more about therapy.”

The estimated recovery time varies.

At the Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery, some patients need 30 to 90 days in-patient treatment, followed by a continuing care program.

But Internet addiction recovery, as any other addiction, requires lifelong treatment, experts said.

“This [problem] can reactive itself any time if the person does not keep working on the recovery,” said Moore. “We see recovery as a lifelong endeavor.”

In addition to private treatment centers, nonprofit organizations like Gamblers Anonymous, Kickporn.com, Online Gamers Anonymous and Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous were created to help addicts.

Online gaming is the form of Internet addiction that is rapidly growing among young people.

“Initially we primarily had people addicted to surfing the Web, chat rooms, virtual communities and things like that. Now we are looking more to gaming,” Moore said.

Brian Robbins, of the entertainment agency Fuel Industries Inc. and a member of the International Game Developers Association, said there’s been a big increase in the number of people playing video games online.

“The vast majority of the Web-based games, … probably 90 to 95 percent, are free to play,” said Robbins.

San Francisco-based Zynga.com offers a huge variety of free games online through Facebook, one of the most popular social networking Web sites. Poker and blackjack are the most popular games, with more than 12 million and 4 million registered players, respectively, according to its Web site.

“Gaming is certainly one of the things that could get people addicted to the Internet because it’s such a compelling content…,” said Robbins. “But I don’t think games are any more susceptible to Internet addiction than any of the other forms of entertainment.”

Source: Medill Reports

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Funny but real:

Meet Dr. Herman I. Libshitz, a retired radiologist and potential Verizon customer who would like DSL. Sadly, Dr. Libshitz was informed that he could not use his name in his email address or as his user name because it has “shit” in it.He tried his best to escalate the complaint with Verizon, but had little luck. First, he called the help line:

“We called their help line, and got a wonderful young man in the Philippines who told us:

” ‘We can’t install it because your name has - in it.’ “

I asked the doctor how I was going to print that. He said, “Just say it’s a word contained in Libshitz.”

He had no luck with a supervisor, so he called the billing disputes number and reached another supervisor who promised to investigate and have someone contact him because ” the only person who could help was in Tampa, and that man would have to call India to get them to change the computer code.” No one called back.

Finally, he got a letter informing him that he could not use his name as a username because it didn’t comply with Verizon’s policy.

It took calls from the Philadelphia Inquirer to get Verizon to deal with Dr. Libshitz and his “questionable” name, and that’s what bothers him. He told the Inquirer that what he wants “is for these people at least to stand at attention to explain themselves. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to get to Verizon. . . . You cannot get to them. They are insulated from things like this.” Unless you work for a newspaper, that is.

Here’s Verizon’s official response:

“As a general rule (since 2005) Verizon doesn’t allow questionable language in e-mail addresses, but we can, and do, make exceptions based on reasonable requests. The one from Dr. and Mrs. Libshitz certainly is reasonable and we regret the inconvenience and frustration they’ve been caused.”

Daniel Rubin: When your name gets turned against you [Philadelphia Inquirer] (Thanks, Will!)

From: Consumerist 

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Who uses stamps these days? Well, as Time clearly shows, there is still big stamp aficionados out there. They are called philatelists :

Postage stamps of odd shapes and sizes have been around for decades. The Pacific island nation of Tonga released coin- and star-shaped stamps in the 1960s and ’70s; Sierra Leone once produced a kola nut-shaped offering; New Caledonia has had stamps shaped like turtles and other sea mammals. But these days odd shapes alone won’t cut it, which is why national post offices and stamp manufacturers are coming up with new twists on the standard colorful squares and rectangles.

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Starting October 1, if you’re flying first class from Dubai to New York on an Emirates Air A380, you’ll have the option of grabbing a hot shower midflight. It’ll cost you $18,000, but some showers are worth it, am I right? “No!” say those party poopers in the environmental lobby.You see, in order to offer every first-class passenger a shower, the airline will have to add one metric tonne of water to its payload, dragging a carbon cost of around 50,000 lbs. per trip.

All part of the luxury experience, right? No one has seen photos of the upcoming A380 first-class cabin, but it is allegedly something on par with the “seven star” Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai, and that it makes Singapore Airlines’ front end—with double beds and dining “environments”—look like a dog’s backend.

Sure, an in-air shower might negatively impact the earth in catastrophic and irreversible ways, but think about it this way: the only people who will make use of it come from oil wealth, so they probably wouldn’t give a shit to begin with! [Times UK via Luxurylaunches]

From Gizmodo:

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From WhooHoo blog:

Li Wei is a modern artist from Bejing (China). His work is a mixture of performance art and photography that creates illusions of a sometimes dangerous reality. Sometimes it seems that gravity doesn’t work in his world. Just take a look at these amazing photos…

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From Jezebel:

 If there was one American cultural meme we didn’t need to export, it would be the recent surge in reported cases of women sexually abusing children. While, as a feminist, I am all for equality in almost every circumstance, I don’t feel that it’s necessary to extend the hypersexualization of girls to boys, or for women to catch up to men in terms of engaging in pedophilia or statutory rape. Be that as it may, while some on this side of the Atlantic are tittering over the relative hotness of the latest rape-y schoolteacher and papers all over the world have been covering the abusive dormitory monitor at Oprah’s school for girls in South Africa, 40 percent of school-age boys in the country report being forced to have sex before the age of 18, mostly by female perpetrators. Ugh.

Unsurprisingly, rapes were more common in poorer communities than richer and committed by people known to the victims more often than not. Nearly thirty percent of victims were assaulted by their fellow students, while 20 percent were assaulted by teachers and another 20 percent were assaulted by family members. The remaining 30 percent were assaulted by non-family members who weren’t teachers.

Neil Andersson and Ari Ho-Foster, who co-authored the study, rightly point out that the sheer volume of sexual abuse is likely to multiply given that children who are abused are more likely to become abusers — and, in fact, 10% of the victims in the study admit to also being perpetrators. They also suggest that the actual rate of abuse might be much higher given the continuing stigma associated with rape. One thing they don’t delve into is how much the rate of assaults today has to do with the rate of assaults in previous generations — is this a multi-generational problem now multiplied by the sheer number of adult victims? Is the onset of widespread abuse associated with a specific period of time or has this been acceptable behavior for generations of schoolboys? It’s hard to say.

Until 2007, raping a boy was not classified as a rape but as an “indecent assault,” a legal change that the authors applaud. They additionally note that decreasing the rape of young boys could pay serious dividends in reducing the rate of HIV infection in South Africa, which then makes one consider the possibility that older people are preying on too-young children in order to satisfy sexual urges without fear of disease. How is is even possible that using a condom has less of a stigma than raping a child?

South African Epidemic Of Schoolboy Sexual Abuse [Science Daily]
Oprah School Abuse Trial Starts [BBC]

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We thought there was supposed to be some backlash against the whole metrosexual thing, but whatever: British chain Superdrug has just launched a men’s cosmetics range called “Taxi Man” , which features “guy-liner” (larger and chunkier for poorly-coordinated male hands) and “manscara.” A concealer is in the works. Says the brand’s creator, “We’ve developed essentials any guy would borrow from his other half. It’s about subtle make-up rather than wanting to create the drag queen look.” “Borrowing?” “Any guy?” Who was their focus group? Why the hell is is called “Taxi Man” which is, by the way, the gayest name ever for a purportedly ‘macho’ line? Have we not learned that when men wear makeup, people get sent to the guillotine? More to the point: is that where our BeneTint went? [News.com.au]

(Jezebel)

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Cars in a parking lot could soon keep track of each other and, like sheep, complain if one of their numbers is stolen or meets a bad end.

At least, that’s the intention of the Sensor Vehicle Anti-Theft System (SVATS) proposed by Sencun Zhu, an assistant professor at Penn State University. As he explained to LiveScience.com, each car would be given a sensor — smaller than a coin — that would wirelessly call roll with other, similarly equipped cars in the parking lot within range, and pass on the results. If any car stopped responding to the roll call without issuing a goodbye signal when it was unlocked, the car herd would decide that the non-responsive car had been stolen and alert the lot’s base station.

Parking lot monitoring could be accomplished without inter-car networking, but the use of networking allows for short-range, low-power transmitters, with longer battery life, Zhu said. The range of the sensor signal between cars will be about TK to TK feet (2 to 10 meters.

He anticipates that each car would have a master sensor drawing power from the car, and battery-powered slave sensors hidden through the vehicle. The slave sensors would take over if the master is defeated by hot-wiring. Mass-produced, the sensors should cost less than a dollar, and Zhu anticipates they could be handed out by commercial parking lots as a competitive measure.

Prevention, anyone?

The not-so-subtle drawback with all such theft-alert devices is that when the alert arrives the car has already been stolen. Experts on car theft avoidance, on the other hand, preach prevention, which, by Ben Franklin’s calculations, is 16 times better than anything you can do after the fact.

Rather than rely on technology, pundits (such as Auto-Theft.info) urge the use of something called common sense. For instance: Lock the car door. Take the keys. Park in well-lit areas with a lot of foot traffic. Keep valuables out of sight. Do not hide spare keys in the car. Do not leave registration or insurance documents in the car.

If further measures seem warranted, get a steering wheel lock of some kind. The simple, visible presence of such a device will likely deter a potential thief.

Owners of particularly vulnerable or valuable vehicles might then want to escalate to an electronic immobilizing device that would prevent thieves from bypassing the ignition and hot-wiring the car. After that, there’s theft-alert and tracking devices, like Zhu’s.

Grim fate

But deciding how much protection is merited is dicey. While expensive luxury cars would logically seem to be prime targets for thieves, the bad guys are actually more likely to grab the junker in the next parking space. That’s because their prime targets are ordinary models of a certain age whose owners are getting desperate for parts — which the thieves supply by stripping stolen cars of the same model.

In 2006, the most commonly stolen vehicles were the 1995 Honda Civic, the 1991 Honda Accord, and the 1989 Toyota Camry, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau. There were no luxury cars in the top 10.

Since the cars are stolen to be stripped, the recovery rate is only 63 percent, reports the NICB

From: Livescience.com

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Richard Catto from capetownnews has discovered Woopra and writes the following:

There are now innumerable ways to collect stats for any type of web site. Bloggers tend to be fanatical about checking their stats to see what’s happening and competing with themselves to continually raise the bar.

Most stats packages take time to deliver the information. Google Analytics, for instance, takes 24 - 48 hours to update your web site’s stats.

Bloggers want that information NOW, if possible, and now there is one stats package which stands out above the rest: WOOPRA.

Woopra gives Real Time Stats. As you watch the Java based console, so you see the visitors come and go. Woopra tells you how many you have viewing your site right now, who they are, where they came from and what country they are in. You can see what pages they open, how long they keep it open, and if you like, you can even initiate a real time chat with them.

If they comment on your blog, then their Woopra session will be tagged with the name they used. You can even choose to tag visitors yourself, to more easily keep track of who they are.

Woopra installs on your blog via a WordPress plugin (or javascript for other types of blogs). To view the stats you need to download the Woopra console which is written in Java, and thus requires you to install Java on your machine.

Once that is accomplished, you need to sign up for an account on Woopra’s site and add the sites you wish to track. Sites are manually approved within a few hours.

So far it seems to be an interesting new toy. If you’re a stats fanatic, I’d recommend you give it a try.

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