Standing in the way of control!

Someone’s Internet persona has almost nothing to do with how they present themselves in real life. It’s like going to a new city where no one knows your name. It’s the dude next to you in the cubicle at Warner Bros who’s on some message board tearing some stranger a new virtual asshole over the series finale of The X-Files. It’s your second cousin leaving borderline pedophilic comments on a YouTube video of fourteen year olds dancing in front of their web cams. It doesn’t mean they’d ever have the balls or inclination to do the same thing in the flesh or that they took what they were doing as seriously as you are.

From: molls..she wrote

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The government believes it has identified nine types of heavy drinker as it launches a new alcohol campaign.

Research by the Department of Health in England with focus groups found heavy drinkers often fell into one of a number of categories.

These ranged from de-stress and depressed drinkers to people who boozed because of boredom or to bond.

Experts said helping people to understand the reasons for their drinking habits was “very useful”.

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There are many password generators on the web but I still find the passwords difficult to remember. I much prefer choosing my own. Though this in itself holds a security risk there is however another program on the web to test your password strength. I was quite surprised that my own password rated very strong.

This site checks your password against several requirements and informs you how you can make it stronger.

From Lifehacker:

The Password Meter web utility tests the strength of your passwords as you type them, scoring your password strength based on a number of positive and negative password attributes. The test measures your password’s number of characters, type of characters used, and the order of your characters. (Sequential letters or numbers, for example, equals weak passwords). Toss your favorite high-security password into this tool—you may be surprised at how you did.

The Password Meter

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This little machine costs +/- US$ 1650:

And I had to purchase it cash since my medical aid doesn’t cover it and it is not for sale or rent in Namibia. Upside I am one of only two people to own this device in Namibia. Downside: It can only be used for 6 months!

Here’s more on this little gadget which hopefully will finally heal my arm…

Exogen 4000+ and Exogen Express

Treatment of fractures with the EXOGEN Bone Healing System (low-intensity pulsed ultrasound) may speed healing, lower the need for further surgery, and get patients back to their normal activities faster.

The EXOGEN Bone Healing System utilizes low-intensity ultrasound to accelerate the healing of indicated fresh fractures up to 38% faster than normal healing. There are economic benefits generally for individuals and organisations with people returning to work after injury more quickly. Faster recovery is in the interests of all patients, clinicians and health care providers.

The EXOGEN Bone Healing System is also highly effective for use on non-healing fractures. These fractures are a significant problem and a major cost to healthcare systems around the world. Clearly patients who suffer fractures which will not heal suffer great frustration and anxiety, and treatment from EXOGEN provides an improved chance to recover, invaluable for

patients who may have previously been largely confined to hospital or their homes.

The ultrasound device is a portable, lightweight unit that delivers the prescribed treatment in a convenient 20 minute daily regimen. The ease of use offered means that patients can treat themselves at home, thus freeing hospital resources from this task. The unit’s digital display guides patients step by step through proper operation and the main unit monitors treatment providing the clinician with an accurate record for reference.

The treatment is safe and has no contra-indications. It has been clinically proven in many thousands of patients worldwide.

* The only difference between the express and the 4000 is the amount of treatment time available per unit.

* 4000+ - once daily for 20 minutes for 1 year.
* Express - once daily for 20 minutes for 6 months.

[Source]

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As is to be expected the World’s tallest building will be found in Dubai…where else? It is called the Dubai Tower or Burj Dubai.

Amazing yet ugly. Bet it looks like a space station at night..

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How much spam you get may depend on the first letter in your e-mail address, a study reveals.

The analysis, of more than 500 million junk messages, revealed those letters that get more junk than average.

It found that e-mail addresses starting with an "A", "M" or "S" got more than 40% spam. By contrast those beginning with a "Q" or "Z" got about 20%.

The difference could be down to the way spammers generate e-mail addresses they want to target, said the study.

Letter attack

The analysis was carried out by University of Cambridge computer scientist Dr Richard Clayton, in a bid to understand the widely noted discrepancies in the amounts of junk mail or spam that different people receive.

Dr Clayton took as his dataset the 550 million e-mail messages sent to customers of net service Demon between 1 February and 27 March 2008.

Looking at the mix of messages landing in inboxes, Dr Clayton found a wide discrepancy in the amounts of junk that different addresses received which seemed to hinge on their initial letters.

The most popular letters for spammers were "A", "M", "S", "R" and "P". about 40% of all the messages arriving in the e-mail inboxes of accounts with addresses that had one of those characters as their first letter were junk. Much less popular were

"Q", "Z" and "Y". For these cases, spam was running at about 20% or less.

The reason for the difference could be partly explained, said Dr Clayton, by the way that spammers generate e-mail addresses to which they then send junk messages.

Often, he said, they carry out so-called "dictionary" attacks. In these, spammers take the part of a live e-mail address in front of the "@" symbol that they know is live, and add that to other net domain names to generate a new one.

For instance, spammers who know that there is a real person attached to  john at example.com may try  john at another.com to see if that reaches a live account too.

As a result the relative abundance of names beginning with "M" compared to "Q" could explain some of the disparities, as spammers would be more likely to re-use popular names and send them more junk.

Dr Clayton said the research had thrown up some anomalies that needed further research. For instance, he said, addresses starting with the letter "U" appear to get more than 50% spam despite there being relatively few of them.

From: BBC

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Firstly, I haven’t blogged in days though it feels like ages. Of course I broke one of the cardinal rules of blogging, that being absent and not having prepared posts with the date stamp function. Several reasons exists for this situation.

Partly depression, partly fatigue and partly procrastination….the thief of time!

I am typing this post using Windows Live Writer. Just testing it. And though I must still see if it is my cup of tea I do get its functionality.

That brings me to Windows….I don’t like Windows or most of its products. For every  little thing you want to download it always seems there needs to be extra stuff installed. In this case, when I downloaded the Zemanta plugin I first had to install the .NET framework…which bothers me since everything from Windows or Microsoft for that matter seems to slow down my computer at one or the other stage. Look no further than Internet Explorer 5 - 7 and now IE8 of which the beta version is now available…

Microsoft needs to learn how to effectively combat the open source market  with their browser. I mean, though the Zemanta plugin is not yet available  for use here at bundublog it is a light extension for Firefox, Flock and argh IE…

But as with most plugins for IE like the Stumble Upon bar it requires you to download a whole file to your computer and then install it….what’s up with that?And that is just the tip of the iceberg that is Microsoft and Windows.

The point that I am trying to make is that I do not like Microsoft or its products simply because it feels as though it makes my life and that of my computer hell……….!!

So lets see if live writer works….

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