Latest News

[Vahed]

Apple's iPhone makes it to stores

Friday, 29 June 2007
BBC news

Apple's much-hyped iPhone has finally gone on sale in the US. Some people had been queuing for days outside Apple and AT&T stores across the US to ensure they got hold of one of the devices.
Hundreds more began queuing during Friday because stores did not start selling the iPhone until 1800 local time (2300 BST).
Apple said buyers visiting its stores would not be able to walk out with more than two iPhones each.
More than 600 people were outside two Apple stores in New York and at one of them, customers cheered as the doors opened, Reuters news agency said.


Costly deal
The iPhone will be available in Europe later in 2007 and Asia in 2008.
Since the iPhone was announced at Macworld in January 2007 the gadget has won a huge amount of coverage.
That interest has continued up to the launch with bloggers reporting live from queues outside some stores. Gadget site Gizmodo is broadcasting live video from the Apple store in San Francisco.
The quad-bandphone has a 3.5in (9cm) touch screen, wi-fi, no keyboard, a camera and a web browser on board. It is also intended to be used as a media player to listen to music and watch video uploaded to it via iTunes.
It is available in two versions sporting either four or eight gigabytes of memory.


Apple said the iPhone's battery would give eight hours of talktime, six hours of net use or seven hours of video watching.
Early reviews of the iPhone have been broadly positive but those who have played around with it said touch screen typing took some getting used to and data download speeds were very slow.
The handset has also been criticised because it does not use the 3G network, does not support instant messaging or voice-activated dialling and does not let people choose ringtones beyond the 25 pre-installed on it.
Apple said it hoped to sell 10 million iPhones by 2008 and grab itself a 1% share of the mobile phone market.
To do this it will face significant competition from well-established handset makers such as Nokia and other touch screen phone makers such as Samsung and HTC.

However, some commentators thought that the high price of the gadget could put people off.
The device costs either $499 or $599 and buyers must also commit to a two-year contract with AT&T that will cost them a minimum of $59.99 per month.
As with many Apple products prices in Europe for the device are likely to be higher than direct currency conversions would suggest.
In a company-wide message relayed to Apple employees on 28 June, Steve Jobs said every worker who had been at the company for more than a year would get one of the devices for free.
The iPhone going on sale on 29 June is likely to be just the first of a long line of gadgets with future models adding the features and software lacking in the original.

[love-to-learn]

Saturday, 4 August 2007
BBC NEWS

Dogs belonging to Mission: Impossible actor Ving Rhames have apparently mauled a man to death at the star's home, authorities have said.

The 40-year-old victim, who lived on the property and worked as a caretaker, has not been named.

He was found dead on the front lawn of Rhames' gated Los Angeles home covered in dog bites, a police spokesman said.

Three Bull Mastiffs and an English bulldog were taken away by animal services following the discovery.

"Two of those dogs appeared to be responsible for the tragic death," said police officer Jason Lee, adding that "several" dogs remained at the property.

Autopsy

Police were alerted to the incident by a phone call early on Friday morning by someone reporting a dead body at Rhames' house.

"It appeared that the person suffered a number of injuries as a result of the dog mauling," said Sergeant Lee Sands.
"There were numerous dog bites all over his body, but the exact cause of death is pending the coroner's ruling."

An autopsy is expected to be performed Monday, said Captain Ed Winter of the Los Angeles coroner's office.

"It's premature to say how he died," said Winter. "We don't know if he was attacked by the dogs and suffered a heart attack."

It is thought that the victim's responsibilities included taking care of the animals.

Representatives for Rhames said he was not in the country at the time of the incident.

The 46-year-old actor is best-known for starring alongside Tom Cruise in all three Mission: Impossible films.

He also appeared as Marsellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction, and received Golden Globe and Emmy nominations for playing boxing promoter Don King in a 1997 TV movie.

The actor told Time magazine in 2001 that he had "eight Fila Brasileiro mastiffs - the national dog of Brazil, also used by US Marines in jungle warfare."

[love-to-learn]

Sunday, 5 August 2007
BBC NEWS

A US soldier has been sentenced to 110 years in prison for his role in the rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the killing of her family.


Private Jesse Spielman was convicted of conspiracy to rape and murder.

He said he acted as a lookout for four other soldiers who carried out the attack in Mahmudiya in March 2006.

Pfc Spielman was given the longest sentence of the group. Three other soldiers pleaded guilty and received sentences between five and 100 years.

The fifth man faces trial in a civil court having been discharged from the army.

'Untrue' allegations

Earlier in the week-long court martial at Fort Campbell in Kentucky, Pfc Spielman of the 101st Airborne Division admitted arson, conspiracy to obstruct justice, wrongfully touching a corpse and drinking.

Although prosecutors did not accuse Pfc Spielman of taking part in the rape or murders, they argued he had participated in the planning of the attack while drinking whisky and playing cards with the other soldiers.

One of the soldiers convicted of the attack, Sgt Paul Cortez, said that Pfc Spielman had stood within a few feet of them as they held down Abeer Qassim al-Janabi and had done nothing to stop them raping her.

The soldiers then killed Miss Janabi, her parents and her younger sister.

But another, Spc James Baker, testified that several portions of a sworn statement, which he had allowed investigators to draft, had falsely exaggerated Pfc Spielman's role in the attack.

On Friday evening, the military jury ruled that Pfc Spielman was guilty of conspiracy to commit rape, rape, housebreaking with intent to commit rape and four counts of felony murder.

Spc Barker, Sgt Cortez and another soldier, Pf. Bryan L Howard, pleaded guilty for their roles in the slayings and received sentences of five to 100 years under plea agreements with prosecutors.

The alleged ringleader, former Pvt Steven Green was discharged from the army for a "personality disorder" before being charged. He faces a possible death sentence if found guilty by a civil court in Kentucky.

On Friday, a US marine sergeant was found guilty of murdering an Iraqi civilian in a separate attack, and jailed for 15 years by a court martial in California.

[love-to-learn]

Friday, 3 August 2007
BBC NEWS

Google has refused to deny mounting speculation that it is working to produce its own brand mobile phone.



Reports suggest that the web giant is developing a series of"GPhones", centred on its mobile services, such as search, e-mail and maps.

In a statement, Google said it was working with carriers, phone makers and content providers to "bring its services to users everywhere".

The firm would not say if its efforts included plans for a handset.

The Google statement said: "What our users and partners are telling us is that they want Google search and Google applications on mobile, and we are working hard every day to deliver that."

Reports circulate

Google has recently partnered with Apple to produce services, such as e-mail and maps, for its iPhone handset.

Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, said recently that more Google services for the iPhone would be rolled out.

Reports have circulated since last year that Google was working with mobile phone manufacturers to produce a handset.

The Wall Street Journal on Thursday said Google had invested "hundreds of millions of dollars" in the project and was involved in discussions with T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless.

The newspaper said the company was seeking to grab a bigger slice of the increasingly important mobile phone advertising market.

Market research firm eMarketer told the paper that the mobile ad industry would be worth $14bn (£7bn) by 2011.

Last month, Google said it was interested in bidding for wireless spectrum licences in the US, which could be the first step towards running its own mobile network.

Google said its interest was in ensuring that customers would be able to buy any mobile device to connect to the full capability of the internet.

At present, wireless carriers routinely try to restrict which models of cell phones that can be used on their networks.

They also often limit the software that can be downloaded onto them, such as ringtones, music or web browser software.

[Petros]

Data: 16 August 2007
By Arwa Damon
CNN

Iraqi women: Prostituting ourselves to feed our children

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The women are too afraid and ashamed to show their faces or have their real names used. They have been driven to sell their bodies to put food on the table for their children -- for as little as $8 a day.

Suha, 37, is a mother of three. She says her husband thinks she is cleaning houses when she leaves home

"People shouldn't criticize women, or talk badly about them," says 37-year-old Suha as she adjusts the light colored scarf she wears these days to avoid extremists who insist women cover themselves. "They all say we have lost our way, but they never ask why we had to take this path."

A mother of three, she wears light makeup, a gold pendant of Iraq around her neck, and an unexpected air of elegance about her.

"I don't have money to take my kid to the doctor. I have to do anything that I can to preserve my child, because I am a mother," she says, explaining why she prostitutes herself.

Anger and frustration rise in her voice as she speaks.

"No matter what else I may be, no matter how off the path I may be, I am a mother!"

Her clasped hands clench and unclench nervously. Her husband thinks that she is cleaning houses when she goes away.

So does Karima's family.

"At the start I was cleaning homes, but I wasn't making much. No matter how hard I worked it just wasn't enough," she says.

Karima, clad in all black, adds, "My husband died of lung cancer nine months ago and left me with nothing."

She has five children, ages 8 to 17. Her eldest son could work, but she's too afraid for his life to let him go into the streets, preferring to sacrifice herself than risk her child.

She was solicited the first time when she was cleaning an office.

"They took advantage of me," she says softly. "At first I rejected it, but then I realized I have to do it."

Both Suha and Karima have clients that call them a couple times a week. Other women resort to trips to the market to find potential clients. Or they flag down vehicles.

Prostitution is a choice more and more Iraqi women are making just to survive.



"It's increasing," Suha says. "I found this 'thing' through my friend, and I have another friend in the same predicament as mine. Because of the circumstance, she is forced to do such things."

Violence, increased cost of living, and lack of any sort of government aid leave women like these with few other options, according to humanitarian workers.

"At this point there is a population of women who have to sell their bodies in order to keep their children alive," says Yanar Mohammed, head and founder of the Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq. "It's a taboo that no one is speaking about."

She adds, "There is a huge population of women who were the victims of war who had to sell their bodies, their souls and they lost it all. It crushes us to see them, but we have to work on it and that's why we started our team of women activists."

Her team pounds the streets of Baghdad looking for these victims often too humiliated to come forward.

"Most of the women that we find at hospitals [who] have tried to commit suicide" have been involved in prostitution, said Basma Rahim, a member of Mohammed's team.

The team's aim is to compile information on specific cases and present it to Iraq's political parties -- to have them, as Mohammed puts it, "come tell us what [they] are ... going to do about this."

Rahim tells the heartbreaking story of one woman they found who lives in a room with three of her children: "She has *** while her three children are in the room, but she makes them stand in separate corners."

According to Rahim and Mohammed, most of the women they encounter say they are driven to prostitution by a desperate desire for survival in the dangerously violent and unforgiving circumstances in Iraq.

"They took this path but they are not pleased," Rahim says.

Karima says when she sees her children with food on the table, she is able to convince herself that it's worth it. "Everything is for the children. They are the beauty in life and, without them, we cannot live."

But she says, "I would never allow my daughter to do this. I would rather marry her off at 13 than have her go through this."

Karima's last happy memory is of her late husband, when they were a family and able to shoulder the hardships of life in today's Iraq together.

Suha says as a young girl she dreamed of being a doctor, with her mom boasting about her potential in that career. Life couldn't have taken her further from that dream.


It's not like we were born into this, nor was it ever in my blood," she says.

What she does for her family to survive now eats away at her. "I lay on my pillow and my brain is spinning, and it all comes back to me as if I am watching a movie."

[behnam karami]

Employees are to blame for internet security breaches according to IT managers questioned in a new survey.

Despite numerous companies failing to enforce internet usage policies, a quarter of IT managers in small and medium-sized companies pinpoint users as the main reason why companies are left open to attack from criminals.

The survey of 750 IT managers in the UK and Europe, carried out by research firm Dynamic Markets, found that less than half of respondents used any kind of web filtering.

Only a quarter (23 per cent) of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) have internet usage policies in place, but many companies do not make employees sign these. Another 16 per cent confessed to having no usage policy at all and said that they completely trust their workers.

Despite this apparent trust, nearly a third (32 per cent) of IT managers highlighted employee behaviour as the main cause of frustration when trying to deploy and maintain IT security. IT security not being high on the corporate agenda and budget issues closely followed.

Almost a third (31 percent) of employees questioned said that they could not cope without being able to access websites such as peer-to-peer and free software download sites which are known to be high security risks.

"We urge all small to medium size businesses to make IT security a business-critical issue," advised Mark Murtagh, technical director at Websense, the company who commissioned the study. "Leaving their employees to make security decisions based on what they feel is right is not only putting company confidential data at risk, but also adding strain to the IT department. Internet use policies need to be automated to ensure that hidden dangers are found and protected against."

The survey also found that the majority of workers in small businesses placed a false sense of security in IT departments , with two-thirds of respondents suggesting that employees placed blind faith in their company to protect them against every internet security threat.

[A r c h i]

I 've just seen this topic in the forum,
Take a look at it:

برای مشاهده محتوا ، لطفا وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید

[Petros]

Benazir Bhutto Assassinated
Data: Dec 2007

CNN

Pakistan's former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday after addressing a large gathering of her supporters.

The suicide bomb attack also killed at least 22 others, doctors said. It was not immediately clear if Bhutto died from shots fired before the blast, or from wounds caused by bomb shrapnel.

Her body was removed from Rawalpindi General Hospital late Thursday night, about six hours after the assassination.

President Pervez Musharraf said the killers were the same extremists that Pakistan is fighting a war against, and announced three days of national mourning.

Video of the scene just moments before the explosion showed Bhutto stepping into a heavily guarded vehicle to leave the rally.

John Moore, a photographer for Getty Images, said he heard at least two gunshots before the bomb was detonated.

Police sources told CNN the bomber, who was riding a motorcycle, blew himself up near Bhutto's vehicle.

Bhutto was rushed to Rawalpindi General Hospital -- less than two miles from the bombing scene -- where doctors pronounced her dead.

Chaos erupted at the hospital when former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif arrived to pay his respects to Bhutto less than three hours after her death.

Hundreds of Bhutto supporters crammed into the entrance shouted and cried, some clutching their heads in pain and shock. Sharif called it "the saddest day" in Pakistan's history. "Something unthinkable has happened," he said.

Sharif said his party will boycott Pakistan's January 8 parliamentary elections in the wake of the assassination.

Police warned citizens to stay home as they expected rioting to break out in city streets in reaction to the death.

Rioters burned tires and blocked roads in Karachi and other cities, police sources said. Police fired on an angry mob, killing two people, in the city of Khairpur in the Sindh province, Geo TV reported.

Bhutto's husband issued a statement from his home in Dubai saying, "All I can say is we're devastated, it's a total shock."

President Bush said those responsible "must be brought to justice" and praised Bhutto as a woman who had "fought the forces of terror." He said: "She refused to allow assassins to dictate the course of her country."

The number of wounded was not immediately known. However, video of the scene showed ambulances lined up to take many to hospitals.

The assassination happened in Rawalpindi's Liaquat Bagh Park, named for Pakistan's first prime minister -- Liaquat Ali Khan -- who was assassinated in the same location in 1951.

The attack came just hours after four supporters of former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif died when members of another political party opened fire on them at a rally near the Islamabad airport Thursday, Pakistan police said.

Several other members of Sharif's party were wounded, police said.

Bhutto, who led Pakistan from 1988 to 1990 and was the first female prime minister of any Islamic nation, was participating in the parliamentary election set for January 8, hoping for a third term.

A terror attack targeting her motorcade in Karachi killed 136 people on the day she returned to Pakistan after eight years of self-imposed exile.

CNN's Mohsin Naqvi, who was at the scene of both bombings, said Thursday's blast was not as powerful as that October attack.

Thursday's attacks come less than two weeks after Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf lifted an emergency declaration he said was necessary to secure his country from terrorists.

Bhutto had been critical of what she believed was a lack of effort by Musharraf's government to protect her.

Two weeks after the October assassination attempt, she wrote a commentary for CNN.com in which she questioned why Pakistan investigators refused international offers of help in finding the attackers.

"The sham investigation of the October 19 massacre and the attempt by the ruling party to politically capitalize on this catastrophe are discomforting, but do not suggest any direct involvement by General Pervez Musharraf," Bhutto wrote.