Sunday, September 30, 2007

Blue Ray Disc

This thing will surely replace our DVD`s, it just a matter of time when...just like what happen to BETAMAX tapes in the 80`S to VHS to Laser Disc to VCD to DVD then here comes the Blue Ray Disc..Players and recorders are now very much available in the market. Wonder why magkakaroon ng pirated blue ray sa Quiapo..Technology innovation is enevitable for sure.


Excerpts from yahoo news recently:Sept 13,2007 news from PCworld:
"Sony Corp. is increasing its bet on Blu-ray Disc and plans to ditch DVD and use the high-definition video disc format in all future digital video recorders in Japan, the company said Wednesday.
The announcement was made at the same time as Sony, the biggest backer of the technology, unveiled four new Blu-ray Disc video recorders. They include support for dual-layer discs-- something that was missing from models announced this time last year-- and can transcode video into the more efficient MPEG4 AVC format to increase recording time per disc.
A 50G-byte Blu-ray Disc typically holds just over 4 hours of HDTV when the over-the-air MPEG2 stream is recorded directly to the disc. By transcoding this stream to MPEG4 AVC it's possible to squeeze 16 hours of HDTV onto the same disc".

Blu-ray
, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD), is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), a group of the world's leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers (including Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video (HD), as well as storing large amounts of data. The format offers more than five times the storage capacity of traditional DVDs and can hold up to 25GB on a single-layer disc and 50GB on a dual-layer disc. This extra capacity combined with the use of advanced video and audio codecs will offer consumers an unprecedented HD experience. In 1997, a new technology emerged that brought digital sound and video into homes all over the world. It was called DVD, and it revolutionized the movie industry.

The industry is set for yet another revolution with the introduction of Blu-ray Discs (BD) in 2006. With their high storage capacity, Blu-ray discs can hold and play back large quantities of high-definition video and audio, as well as photos, data and other digital content.


A current, single-sided, standard DVD can hold 4.7 GB (gigabytes) of information. That's about the size of an average two-hour, standard-definition movie with a few extra features. But a high-definition movie, which has a much clearer image (see How Digital Television Works), takes up about five times more bandwidth and therefore requires a disc with about five times more storage. As TV sets and movie studios make the move to high definition, consumers are going to need playback systems with a lot more storage capacity.


Blu-ray is the next-generation digital video disc. It can record, store and play back high-definition video and digital audio, as well as computer data. The advantage to Blu-ray is the sheer amount of information it can hold:
  • A single-layer Blu-ray disc, which is roughly the same size as a DVD, can hold up to 27 GB of data -- that's more than two hours of high-definition video or about 13 hours of standard video.

  • A double-layer Blu-ray disc can store up to 50 GB, enough to hold about 4.5 hours of high-definition video or more than 20 hours of standard video. And there are even plans in the works to develop a disc with twice that amount of storage.

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Pinoy in Hollywood

Fil-Am teen Vanessa Hudgens one of Hollywood's highest paid young actresses.

Did you know that Filipino American teenage star Vanessa Hudgens is one of today's highest paid young Hollywood actresses in the league of Dakota Fanning, Lindsay Lohan and Daniel Randcliffe?

And her star only keeps on shining - and her paycheck getting bigger - as the smash hit made for the TV musical film, "High School Musical (HSM)", continues to lord the rating game on American television.

Its sequel, "High School Musical 2," drew a whopping 17.2 million viewers on The Disney Channel on August.17 - the biggest audience for any telecast in the history of basic cable television - beating out ESPN's Giants-Cowboys Monday Night Football game as last year's most-watched show (16 million) in the history of American cable. For comparison, the most watched show on U.S. broadcast TV that week was NBC's "America's Got Talent," which average 10.8 million viewers.

"HSM" follows a group of high school kids dealing with life and love.

The original spawned a hit soundtrack, a worldwide concert tour, a show at Walt Disney World, and even a book series that helped Vanessa land in the Top 10 List of Forbes magazine's top-earning stars under 21.


In the list, the 18-year-old Vanessa was No. 7 with estimated earnings of $2 million. She was tied with Hayden Panettiere, 17, of hit TV series "Heroes," and ahead of Abigail Breslin, 10, of "Little Miss Sunshine" ($1.5 million).

The list was topped by Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, 20, ($40 million combined), Daniel, 17 ($13 million); Lindsay, 21, ($6 million), Dakota, 13 ($4 million) and Amanda Bynes, 20 ($2.5 million).

A third "HSM", this time for the big screen, is now being readied for a 2008 release which is expected to push Vanessa's star (and paycheck) even higher, along with her "HSM" co-star and real life sweetheart Zac Efron, 19. Interestingly, people close to the two rising stars have reportedly been advising them to take their relationship slow and focus more on their hot careers as young idols - and role models - rather than following the footsteps (or missteps?) of such stars as Lindsay and Britney Spears.

Vanessa, who is also an endorser for Neutrogena, was born in Salinas, California to a Filipino mother, Gina Guangco, and an American father, Greg Hudgens.

She has been trained in piano, dance and voice and sings opera, and wants to study business in college.

Vanessa began performing at an early age, appearing in musicals starting at age eight, by taking over a friend who couldn't go to the audition, and moved to Los Angeles after winning an audition for a commercial. She then scored roles on shows such as "Quintunplets," "Cover Me," and "Still Standing," then made her feature debut in "Thirteen," and appeared in the 2004 summer film "Thunderbirds". She also made TV appearances before landing the "HSM" show in 2006, and release her album "V" in the same year.

Other Pinoys in hollywood.

In the entertainment department, Filipinos have always wowed the audiences, critics, and judges abroad. Local movies have earned positive reviews in international film festivals. Singers have dominated the concert stage and singing contests. Actors have also conquered the theater stage.

In Hollywood, we have old guards like Lou Diamond Phillips, Phoebe Cates, and Tia Carrera who all have Filipino lineage and were able to make it big in the world's entertainment capital. In the music scene, we have metal guitar legend Kirk Hammet, among a few others.

During the past couple of years, more and more names with Filipino blood are coming out and making waves in Tinseltown. What's good about the current crop of Filipino-foreigners is that they're proud of their roots and even vocally express it during interviews.

We listed down some of our kababayans in the States who are currently leading the new generation of Filipino talents in the international arena. Celebrities who, during the past two to three years, have created a global following and inspire the new generation.

1. Rob Schneider

Comedian Rob Schneider, Robert Michael Schneider in real life, was born to a Jewish-American father and his mother who's a kindergarten teacher and ex-school board president. Rob's maternal grandmother was a Filipina, which probably explains why the former stand-up comic is a staunch advocate against racism. He has even gone to great lengths to publicly denounce Hollywood actors brandishing anti-Semitic views.

Polishing his comedic chops, Rob started as a stand-up comedian around the San Francisco area. He was hired by the legendary Saturday Night Live in 1988 as a writer before graduating to full-time cast member, playing various funny to annoying characters. His stint made him the first Asian-American to grace the show.

Hollywood movies came next after SNL and Rob did supporting roles in Surf Ninjas, Judge Dredd, The Beverly Hillbillies, Demolition Man, and Down Periscope.

His biggest film break was playing the lead role in the comedy film Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, which, owing to its success spawned a sequel, Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo.

In 2006, Rob made his directorial debut with Big Stan.

2. Apl.de.ap

Unmistakably Filipino, Allan Pineda Lindo or Apl.de.ap of Black Eyed Peas, has an inspiring success story that's truly worth telling.

Allan was born in Sapang Bato, Angeles City, Pampanga. His father was a US serviceman at Clark Air Base, who abandoned him and his Filipina mother as soon as he was born. It was a hard life from thereon.

Amid life's uncertainties, music provided Allan a refuge and, eventually, salvation. His early music heroes include Stevie Wonder, Eagles, the Beatles and the home-grown folk music of Asin. He soon discovered hip-hop music, which led to his fascination with break dancing.

"I would take the jeepney all the way to Angeles City and that's how I got introduced to break dancing. I see kids at corners break-dancing and I'm like, ‘I wanna do that'" he vividly recalls in a previous interview.

Forming a break-dancing group, Allan went to the States where he became a familiar fixture in Los Angeles' hip-hop and break-dancing scene. The group he formed soon morphed into the Black Eyed Peas. They adapted a more palatable kind of hip-hop combined with funk music, a big departure from the prevalent gangsta rap of their Los Angeles peers.

Despite all the success achieved by the Black Eyed Peas, Allan is lauded for incorporating Filipino themes into the group's music, as we hear in songs like The Apl Song, where he talks about his roots and even borrows the song's refrain from Balita, an Asin original.

He also wrote a song entitled Bebot, a Filipino street word for "woman". The video of the said single was shot around LA featuring Filipinos, Filipino-Americans, and other Asian ethnic groups around the bay area.

3. Nicole Scherzinger

The Pussycat Dolls' Nicole Scherzinger couldn't be more Filipino when she said that her upbringing was conservative Catholic.

Born in Hawaii to a Filipino father and Hawaiian/Russian mother, Nicole, who is Nicole Elikolani Prescovia Scherzinger in real life, has always been into performing.

She attended Wright State University, where she took up Theater Arts but later on decided to halt her college education to do backup vocals for a rock band.

After a couple of collaborations, Nicole earned a spot in the all-girl pop sensation called Eden's Crush. Despite the great promise showed by the group, as proven by their first two singles, they unfortunately folded up.

Nicole continued doing solo appearances. Taking up the name Nicole Kea, she did a cover of Breakfast in Bed (popularized by Baby Washington) and was included in the soundtrack of Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore's 50 First Dates.

Nicole officially joined the then-fledgling The Pussycat Dolls in 2003. Buoyed by the success of their singles—Don't Cha, Buttons, Wait A Minute, Stickwitu and Beep—the group's popularity soared. Nicole sang majority of the group's songs and was the only one among the other members who was credited for songwriting duties.

Recognizing her talent and strong appeal, Nicole was tapped by local clothing giant Bench as one of its endorsers. Aside from being busy with The Pussycat Dolls, Nicole is also currently busy recording her first solo album under the guidance of giant producers, will.i.am, Timbaland, Kara Dioguardi, and Bryan Michael Cox.

5. Michael Copon

Popularly known as Lucas, the Blue Power Ranger and Felix of One Tree Hill, Michael is starting to create a loud buzz around him because of his good looks and talent.

Michael's father is a Filipino and his mother is of German-American descent. He was born in Chesapeake, Virginia, on November 13, 1982. He took up his secondary education at Deep Creek High School.

His credentials include TV shows Scrubs, Reno 911!, That's So Raven and Even Stevens. Michael even appeared in movies like All You've Got, Elevator, and Sideliners.

A multi-faceted talent, Michael also dabbles in modeling and music.

5. Vanessa Minnillo

Vanessa, according to wikipedia, was born at Clark Air Base, Angeles City, Philippines, to Vincent Minnillo, a U.S. Air Force aircrew member, and Helen Berecero. Her dad has Italian and Irish blood, and her mom is Filipino.

Her 2000 Miss Teen USA crown was her passport to showbiz. She hosted MTV's Total Request Live, and played minor roles in The Bold and the Beautiful, That's Life, Maybe It's Me, and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

She is currently dating singer Nick Lachey, former husband of Jessica Simpson.

Other Pinoys who've made waves among American audiences are Paolo Montalban (who starred in Mortal Kombat: Conquest and Cinderella), Dante Basco (actor who appeared on The Debut), Enrique Iglesias, Jocelyn Enriquez, Reggie Lee (who played William Kim on Prison Break, and was included in two of The Pirates of Carribean films, and The Fast and the Furious), to name a few.




Thursday, September 27, 2007

A must know knowledge: Difference between http & https

A must know info for internet user specially for those people using the internet for financial transaction.

What is the main difference between http:// and https://

It's all about keeping you secure

HTTP stands for HyperText Transport Protocol,-Protocol (
You use a protocol to communicate information to another person (or computer). If you both follow different rules about how the information will be laid out, you won't be able to understand each other. The communications protocol will also dictate the actions that must be performed given the information received(between web servers and
clients).

The letter S makes the difference between HTTP and HTTPS.

The S stands for "Secure".

If you visit a website or webpage, and look at the address in the web browser, it will likely begin with the following: http://.

See sample site below(my blog),
note the encircled http:// which can be found in every unsecured sites.

Click image to enlarge.

This means that the website is talking to your browser using the regular 'unsecure' language.

In other words, it is possible for someone to "eavesdrop" or hack/intercept on your computer's conversation with the website.

If you fill out a form on the website, someone might see the information you send to that site.
This is why you never ever ever enter your credit card number in an
http website!

But if the web address begins with https://, that basically means your computer is talking to the website in a secure code that no one can eavesdrop on.

See my example secure site below:
i choose Equitable bank site because i use it frequently and it is very secured. It is secured by Verisign known for Encryption and SSL Certificates.
Note the encircled https:
//? This indicate the site is secured. Every transmission is encrypted and rigorously authenticated.
Click image to enlarge.

You understand why this is so important, right?

If a website ever asks you to enter your credit card information, you should automatically look to see if the web address begins with https://.

If it doesn't, there's no way you're going to enter sensitive information like a credit card number!


Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Dreams to Remember


The Southside Boxing Club in Youngstown, Ohio ain’t much.

Just a big room with a ring, a few punching bags and a handful of young souls that toil away with big dreams that stay locked away in their minds.

Dreams that they have mostly kept to themselves.

Over the years lots of kids have dared to walk up to the door and peek inside Jack Loew’s dark little gym. A few of them even muster up the courage to step inside and maybe skip some rope or punch the heavy bag.

Then they just never come back.

When a scrawny little nine year-old named Kelly Pavlik, who had two older brothers that used to pick on him, wandered up to trainer Jack Loew, he looked like he might not ever come back either. But here is Kelly Pavlik nearly fifteen years later. He’s grown from a skinny kid into a man, he’s the #1 contender in the middleweight division and on Saturday night in Atlantic City he’s going to try and make good on a dream that he has mostly kept to himself for a lot of years.

Kelly Pavlik wants to become the middleweight champion of the world.

He didn’t come from much. Most people from Youngstown don’t. His father, Mike, used to work at Republic Steel which is long since gone. The city is now mostly a hollowed out shell of it’s former self. Huge, empty steel mills with broken down brick facades are rusted out skeletons that serve as nothing more than memories of what this thriving steel town used to be. The city has lost half of its population since the glory days, but Kelly Pavlik is still here. He still has his dreams and Youngstown will always be home.

He runs the same streets that he always has. Up and down the cracked avenues with the broken sidewalks. He jogs past modest homes with small front lawns separated by chain link fences that have American flags blowing in the wind. The people know who he is and they mostly leave him alone. They’ll wave or nod their head when he’s out doing his roadwork. A few will shout out, “Good luck, Kelly!”

The pull for him to leave Youngstown and set up shop elsewhere with a big named trainer in a big name gym in a big name city is still there. The out-of-towners and those who say they know better still whisper in his ear from time-to-time. They tell him he’ll never beat Taylor with a small town trainer who trains him out of a small town gym.

But Kelly Pavlik has never believed that.

Youngstown Mayor Jay Williams believes Pavlik's achievements rate high among the other sports heroes, like former lightweight champions Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini and Harry Arroyo who also bloomed from the same humble beginnings.

“I think this is a new chapter being written,” Williams recently told Pavlik’s hometown newspaper. “Kelly Pavlik represents, first and foremost, himself and his family, but also the city in an exemplary fashion.”

But Kelly Pavlik doesn’t listen to much of that kind of talk or let it go to his head. He’s still the same Kelly Pavlik who shared a small house with his parent s and two brothers, Michael, Jr. and Ricky. He’s still the same kid who is quiet and unassuming in a “boy next door” sort of way.

With Bob Arum’s Top Rank as his promoter, Bruce Trampler as his matchmaker, Cameron Dunkin navigating the tricky managerial world and Loew as his trainer, Pavlik has cut a path through the middleweights that has seen him go unbeaten in the last seven years while compiling a record of 31-0 (28) KO’s. At age 25, he seems to be peaking, with his most impressive win coming against the dangerous destroyer Edison Miranda in his last fight.

Just a few weeks after the Miranda fight, I had the chance to talk to Kelly Pavlik one-on-one. The first thing you notice about him is how soft-spoken he is. And polite too.

He has an honest way about him borne out of the blue collar work ethic that the rust belt of Ohio is know for. “The way my parents raised me is the same way I want to raise my daughter,” he said.

There’s no sense that he ever tries to be anything or anybody more than who he is and he has an honest way about him that is unusual among big time boxers. He doesn’t call attention to himself or sing his own praises or brag about what he can do or what he’s going to do. He doesn’t call other fighters’ names or wear fancy jewelry. With Kelly Pavlik, you realize right away, that what you see - is what you get.

He wants you to believe what he is telling you, because he believes it too.

“All I’ve ever wanted is a shot,” Pavlik told me at the Boxing Writers Association of America awards dinner at New York’s famous Copacabana Club back on June 8th.

He was dressed in a dark suit with a shirt and tie and he was sipping on a bottle of beer. He looked more like a young Wall Street guy out on the town after a hard week at the office than he did a brutal puncher capable of laying prizefighters out with one shot.

The scrapes from the fight with Miranda, the jaguar-like force from Columbia, had healed and faded away by then. Coincidentally, this was also the day the title fight was pretty much sealed by his promoter Bob Arum and Taylor’s promoter, Lou DiBella.

“It looks like it’s going to happen,” said a hopeful and relaxed Pavlik who has a temperament and personality that tells you he doesn’t get too excited about things that he has no control over.

The money has to be right, though,” he continued. “But I’m not greedy. I just want a fair share and I’ll be happy and we can get this thing done.”

He didn’t say much more than that. He didn’t brag that he was going to be the next middleweight champion of the world.

That’s a big dream, and one that Kelly Pavlik has mostly kept to himself.


September 2007

10 ways to stop those credit card sales




1. After the telemarketer finishes speaking, ask him/her to marry you.

2. Tell the telemarketer you are busy at the moment, and ask him/her if he/she will give you his/her home phone number so you can call him/her back.

3. Ask them to repeat everything they say, several times.

4. Tell them it is dinner time, BUT ask if they would please hold. Put them on your speaker phone while you continue to eat at your leisure. Smack your food loudly and continue with your dinner conversation.

5. Tell them that all business goes through your agent, and hand the phone to your five year old child.

6. Tell them you are hard of hearing and that they need to speak up...louder. ..louder. ..louder!

7. Tell them to speak very slowly because you want to write every word down.

8. If they start out with, "How are you today?", say "I'm so glad you asked, because no one these days seems to care, and I have all these problems.... ........"

9. Cry out in surprise, "Helen, is that you? I've been hoping you'd call! How is the family?" When they insist they are not Helen, tell them to stop joking. This works especially well if the telemarketer is really MALE.

10. Tell the HSBC call center guy to call on your office number. - and give him the CITIBANK call center number.



Sunday, September 23, 2007

Most Powerfull Women in the World-Top 10

#1 Angela Merkel
Chancellor



#2 Wu Yi
Vice premier
China


#3 Ho Ching

Chief executive, Temasek Holdings
Singapore


#4 Condoleezza Rice

Secretary of State
U.S.


#5 Indra K. Nooyi

Chairman, chief executive, PepsiCo
U.S.

#6 Sonia Gandhi
President, National Congress Party
India

#7 Cynthia Carroll
Chief executive, Anglo American
U.K.


#8 Patricia A. Woertz
Chairman, Archer Daniels Midland
U.S.

#9 Irene Rosenfeld

Chairman, chief executive, Kraft Foods
U.S.

#10 Patricia Russo
Chief executive, Alcatel-Lucent
U.S.

FAMOUS BRAND NAME HISTORY

Apache
It got its name because its founders got started by applying patches
to code written for NCSA's httpd daemon. The result was 'A PAtCHy'
server - thus, the name Apache.

Jakarta
(project from Apache)
A project constituted by SUN and Apache to create a web server
handling servlets and JSPs. Jakarta was name of the conference room at
SUN where most of the meetings between SUN and Apache took place.

Tomcat
The servlet part of the Jakarta project. Tomcat was the code name for
the JSDK 2.1 project inside SUN.

C
Dennis Ritchie improved on the B programming language and called it
'New B'. He later called it C. Earlier B was created by Ken Thompson
as a revision of the Bon programming language (named after his wife
Bonnie).

C++

Bjarne Stroustrup called his new language 'C with Classes' and then
'new C'. Because of which the original C began to be called 'old C'
which was considered insulting to the C community. At this time Rick
Mascitti suggested the name C++ as a successor to C.

GNU

A species of African antelope. Founder of the GNU project Richard
Stallman liked the name because of the humor associated with its
pronunciation and was also influenced by the children's song 'The Gnu
Song' which is a song sung by a gnu. Also it fitted into the recursive
acronym culture with 'GNU's Not Unix'.

Java
Originally called Oak by creator James Gosling, from the tree that
stood outside his window, the programming team had to look for a
substitute, as there was no other language with the same name. Java
was selected from a list of suggestions. It came from the name of the
coffee that the programmers drank.

LG

Combination of two popular Korean brands Lucky and Goldstar.

Linux
Linus Torvalds originally used the Minix OS on his system, which he
replaced by his OS. Hence the working name was Linux (Linus' Minix).
He thought the name to be too egotistical and planned to name it Freax
(free + freak + x). His friend Ari Lemmke encouraged Linus to upload
it to a network so it could be easily downloaded. Ari gave Linus a
directory called Linux on his FTP server, as he did not like the name
Freax. (Linus's parents named him after two-time Nobel Prize winner
Linus Pauling).

Mozilla
When Marc Andreesen, founder of Netscape, created a browser to replace
Mosaic (also developed by him), it was named Mozilla (Mosaic-Killer
Godzilla). The marketing guys didn't like the name however and it was
re-christened Netscape Navigator.

Red Hat

Company founder Marc Ewing was given the Cornell lacrosse team cap
(with red and white stripes) while at college by his grandfather. He
lost it and had to search for it desperately. The manual of the beta
version of Red Hat Linux had an appeal to readers to return his Red
Hat if found by anyone!

SAP

"Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing", formed by 4
ex-IBM employees who used to work in the
'Systems/Applications/Projects' group of IBM.

SCO (UNIX)
From Santa Cruz Operation. The company's office was in Santa Cruz.

UNIX
When Bell Labs pulled out of MULTICS (MULTiplexed Information and
Computing System), which was originally a joint Bell/GE/MIT project,
Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie of Bell Labs wrote a simpler version
of the OS. They needed the OS to run the game Space War that was
compiled under MULTICS. It was called UNICS - UNIplexed operating and
Computing System by Brian Kernighan. It was later shortened to UNIX.

Xerox
The inventor, Chestor Carlson, named his product trying to say `dry'
(as it was dry copying, markedly different from the then prevailing
wet copying). The Greek root `xer' means dry.

3M
Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company started off by mining the
material corundum used to make sandpaper.

Interesting facts behind some of the most famous brands.
There are many companies / brands / products whose
names were derived from strange circumstances.

Mercedes

This was actually the financier's daughter's name.

Adobe
This came from name of the river Adobe Creek that ran
behind the house of founder John Warnock.

Apple Computers

It was the favorite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three months
late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his
company Apple Computers if the other colleagues didn't suggest a
better name by 5 O'clock.

CISCO

It is not an acronym as popularly believed. It is short for San Francisco.

Compaq


This name was formed by using COMp, for computer, and PAQ to denote a
small integral object.

Corel


The name was derived from the founder's name Dr. Michael Cowpland. It
stands for COwpland REsearch Laboratory.

Google
The name started as a joke boasting about the amount of information
the search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named
'Googol', a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100
zeros. After founders Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry
Page presented their project to an angel investor, they received a
cheque made out to 'Google'


Hotmail
Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a
computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the
business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending
in 'mail' and finally settled for hotmail as it included! the letters
"html" - the programming language used to write web pages. It was
initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective uppercasing.

Hewlett Packard

Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the
company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or
Packard-Hewlett.

Intel

Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company 'Moore
Noyce' but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain so they had
to settle for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.

Lotus (Notes)

Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from 'The Lotus Position' or
'Padmasana'. Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation
of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Microsoft
Coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to
MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft! , the '-'
was removed later on.

Motorola

Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started
manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the time
was called Victrola.

ORACLE

Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project for
the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). The code name for the project
was called Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give answers to
all questions or something such). The project was designed to help use
the newly written SQL code by IBM. The project eventually was
terminated but Larry and Bob decided to finish what they started and
bring it to the world. They kept the name Oracle and created the RDBMS
engine. Later they kept the same name for the company.

Sony

It originated from the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny' a
slang used ! by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.

SUN
Founded by 4 Stanford University buddies, SUN is the acronym for
Stanford University Network. Andreas Bechtolsheim built a
microcomputer; Vinod Khosla recruited him and Scott McNealy to
manufacture computers based on it, and Bill Joy to develop a
UNIX-based OS for the computer.

Yahoo!

The word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book
'Gulliver's Travels'. It represents a person who is repulsive in
appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! Founders Jerry Yang
and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves
yahoos.

Friday, September 21, 2007

2007 Top 10 Billionaires

1. Net Worth: $56.0 billion Fortune: self made More on William Gates III

2. Net Worth: $52.0 billion Fortune: self made More on Warren Buffett

3. Net Worth: $49.0 billion Fortune: self made More on Carlos Slim Helu

4. Net Worth: $33.0 billion Fortune: self made More on Ingvar Kamprad & family

5. Net Worth: $32.0 billion Fortune: inherited and growing More on Lakshmi Mittal

6. Net Worth: $26.5 billion Fortune: self made More on Sheldon Adelson

7. Net Worth: $26.0 billion Fortune: inherited and growing More on Bernard Arnault

8. Net Worth: $24.0 billion Fortune: self made More on Amancio Ortega

9. Net Worth: $23.0 billion Fortune: self made More on Li Ka-shing

10. Net Worth: $22.0 billion Fortune: inherited More on David Thomson & family




Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Dancing With The Thugs


In less than a week, “Pretty Boy” Floyd Mayweather, Jr. will make his much talked about debut on the new season of ABC’s hit television show “Dancing with the Stars”.

Maybe they should be calling this “Extreme Makeover” instead.

Most boxing fans know Mayweather as a garbage-mouthed, trash talker with a hair trigger temper and a personality best described as the other side of cocky. But the ABC network is about to gloss over all of Mayweather’s previous transgressions, put him in front of a national television audience and then allow him to dance and entertain gullible Nielsen families.

What the mainstream public doesn’t know about Floyd Mayweather, Jr. could hurt them.

In the past, Mayweather was alleged to have broken a champagne bottle over a fellow bar patron’s head. On another occasion he was reported to have kicked a bar bouncer in the head during saloon melee. He also purportedly assaulted two women in a Las Vegas club. Besides that congenial behavior, the mother of his children, Josie Harris, once reputedly claimed that Mayweather had assaulted her as well.

And that’s just what we know about.

Mayweather, however, before he hits the airwaves explained away his behavior and seems to making an effort to turn over a new leaf. “In boxing,” said Mayweather several weeks ago; “I'm a loudmouth. In ‘Dancing with the Stars’ I can't be a loudmouth. The only thing I can do is go out there and work hard.”

This is the same “Money Mayweather” (his new nickname) that last week nearly electrocuted himself, his close friend and rapper 50 Cent, and a hoard of people assembled around the pool at the Hardrock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas that were festively enjoying the run up to the MTV Video Music Awards.

The 30 year-old Mayweather demonstrated the good judgment he is known for when he “made it rain”. He took wads of bills in various denominations out of a designer leather satchel and threw them into the air over the pool. This caused some of the fans to rush the pool side stage, a few to dive into the water to grab for the bucks, and others to swim madly and splash about. All this hyperactivity nearly caused the electrical musical equipment and lights to topple into the water which would likely have killed everyone had “50” not been forced to call a halt to the show in order to prevent a real tragedy from occurring.

Whatever the case with Mayweather, his mouth, and his ability to create his own weather system - who you are is who you are - and he likely won’t be able to fool the mainstream public for too long. A slick smile and flashy dance moves are only good for so many nights and even his dance partner; the capable Karina Smirnoff won’t be able to prevent Mayweather’s true colors from bleeding through. Like Cus D’Amato once said, “A man born round don’t die square.”

Floyd was up to his usual antics on Monday and again his charming personality seeped through like dog excrement trapped in a paper bag.

The locale was Universal Studios in Los Angeles and the occasion was the press conference to kick-off the “Undefeated” promotion for Mayweather’s December match in Las Vegas against England’s Ricky Hatton. Incidentally, over 16,000 seats for the fight, which will be held at the MGM Grand Garden, sold out within minutes of going on sale on Monday morning.

Mayweather showed up attired in a three-piece suit waving an American flag in each hand. Someone, likely with Golden Boy Promotions or HBO, or both, had the bad sense to play a lewd rap song over the public address system as Mayweather made his entrance. At one point, Mayweather donned a fake crown and proclaimed himself “the new president of boxing.”

Michael Buffer introduced Floyd as “fierce and flashy” and then Mayweather started right in on an unsuspecting Ricky Hatton with enough verbal hooks and jabs to bewilder the Queen of England. Despite the presence of his dance partner, Smirnoff, and Oscar De La Hoya, his former foe and current promoter, Mayweather served notice right off the bat that there was only one star on the dais – and that was him.

Mayweather, who has a professional ring record of 38-0 (24) KO’s, insultingly referred to Hatton, who is also undefeated at 43-0 (31) KO’s, and who has a tendency to put on weight between fights, as “Vicky Fatton”.

Then, like the big bad wolf from “Little Red Riding Hood”, Floyd huffed and puffed and preened and posed and jumped and gyrated while up on the stage trying to blow Hatton’s house down. He got into a stare down with Hatton and got his face within an inch of Ricky’s nose and told him to, “Make a move.” Hatton showed some English manners and didn’t bother to play Floyd’s mind games or engage in similar crass behavior.

Mayweather can say what he wants about using his personality to “sell tickets” but the arena is already sold out in Las Vegas. Additional closed circuit seats are being made available for the crush of English fans that will make the trek across the Atlantic Ocean to the Nevada desert to support “Our boy Ricky” and the fight will likely be an overwhelming pay-per view success. The degrading rants of Mayweather were simply a case of Floyd being the real Floyd.

When asked why he decided to continue his career and fight Hatton after claiming he was “retired forever” after the De La Hoya fight back in May, “Money Mayweather” who made over $20 million against Oscar, explained things this way: “If the price is right anything is possible. I still got money coming in from that fight.”

Floyd, never one to let up on an opponent, at least verbally, later went on to say that, “I really don’t even know too much about Ricky Hatton. I knew he fight (sic) a bunch of guys who was over the hill.” Floyd then went on to proclaim that, “I love my life.”

Asked for his opinion of Mayweather and his goon-like theatrics, Hatton was matter-of-fact in his assessment. “He’s very disrespectful to be honest with you,” said the down to earth Hatton. “I’ve only met him on a few occasions and if he has a good side I haven’t seen it yet. It’s one thing selling tickets, but I don’t think he does it with a great deal of class. I think the most hurtful thing was that he didn’t get a reaction out of me. He was just insulting me and saying he was going to do this and do that and that he was going to do me over. I was just chewing me gum and smiling at him. When I did make a move he just walked away.”

At the end of the surprisingly sparsely attended press conference, Hatton was asked if he was going to tune in to watch Floyd show his fancy footwork and strut his stuff on “Dancing with the Stars”. Hatton just grinned in a dismissive way and disgustingly muttered, “Not bloody likely”.

After day one of a multi-city press tour that will stretch from California to England, Ricky Hatton had already seen enough of the dancing thug.

September 2007

Monday, September 17, 2007

World`s Fastest Computer



What is the world's fastest computer?

To put things in perspective, let's start with the computer sitting on your desk -- the computer you use on a day-to-day basis to browse the Internet, handle spreadsheets, create documents, etc. Most people have something like a Pentium computer running Windows, or a Macintosh. A computer like this can execute approximately 100 million instructions per second. Your particular machine might be twice that fast or half that fast, but that's the ballpark.

The fastest computer in the world is much faster than that, and it is sitting right on top of your shoulders! The human brain is an amazing computing device and the fastest processor available right now. Let me give you an example:

Your desktop computer is just starting to get to the point where it can "understand" speech and take dictation, translating spoken words into written words. It can only understand one speaker, and that speaker has to train it for about 20 minutes, and the dictation software will still make a lot of mistakes. So 100 million instructions per second can barely handle dictation.

Your brain, on the other hand, can understand any number of speakers. It needs no training and will make zero mistakes. It may even be able to understand multiple languages! And the speech processing portion of your brain is just one small part of the whole package -- your brain can also process complex visual images, control your entire body, understand conceptual problems and create new ideas. Your brain is made up of about one trillion cells with 100 trillion connections between those cells. We might take a rough estimate and say it is handling 10 quadrillion instructions per second, but it really is hard to say.

In the 2006 TOP500 list, which ranks supercomputers by speed, the top three supercomputers are as follows:

  1. IBM's BlueGene/L - 360 teraflops
  2. IBM's BGW - 115 teraflops
  3. IBM's ASC Purple - 93 teraflops
Another supercomputer called MDGrape-3, built by the Japanese company RIKEN, has a theoretical maximum speed of 1 petaflop (1 guadrillion operations per second), which is three times faster than the BlueGene/L. But MDGrape-3 can't run the official ranking software of the TOP500 list, so BlueGene/L remains at the top of the list at 360 trillion operations per second, which is pretty fast...but it's still not as fast as your brain.
The world's fastest supercomputer will probably never be known as the world's fastest supercomputer. RIKEN's MDGrape-3 is the first machine to break the petaflop barrier -- that's 1 quadrillion calculations (floating-point operations, to be specific) per second -- and it's three times faster than the currently ranked fastest computer in the world, IBM's BlueGene/L. But MDGrape-3 is so specialized that it can't run the software used to officially rank computing speed. What it can do is determine the effect of any chemical compound on one of the most intricate systems in the human body in a couple of seconds.

What's the world's fastest supercomputer used for?

MDGrape-3 is designed for pharmaceutical research, specifically molecular dynamics simulation. In developing drugs, pharmaceutical companies have to analyze thousands on thousands of chemical compounds to find out how they'll affect the protein-bonding structures in the human body. Protein structures called enzymes are the building blocks that do all of the work within a cell, and the way these proteins bond with any drug compound introduced into the human body determines the body's response to that drug. MDGrape-3 produces simulations of these molecular interactions. What takes most computers hours or days to analyze takes MDGrape-3 a few seconds. This functionality is invaluable in drug research, and it could drastically cut the research time involved in the development of new cures. A subsidiary of pharmaceutical giant Merck has already booked time on the machine.

Structurally speaking, MDGrape-3 is a parallel computing system consisting of two main sections: a primary server unit and a specialized-engines unit. The latter component is a cluster of 201 engines running proprietary chips developed by Riken specifically for MDGrape-3. It's this huge set of engines, running 24 MDGrape-3 chips each, that does the heavy protein-analysis lifting. Each chip has a maximum processing speed of 230 gigaflops (one billion operations per second). The primary server unit manages the engine cluster. This parallel server setup runs two different types of processors: 65 servers run dual-core Intel 5000-series Xeon processors, 256 per server; and 37 servers run 3.3-GHz Intel Xeon processors, each with 2 MB of level 1 cache, at 74 processors per server. This hardware structure enables the 1-petaflop speed, which is the machine's theoretical maximum for certain processes.

MDGrape-3 took $9 million and about four years to build. And it's actually very efficient -- a total cost of $9 million breaks down to about $15 per gigaflop. The slower BlueGene/L cost about $140 per gigaflop to build.

BlueGene/L, which tops out at a theoretical 360 teraflops (trillion calculations per second), is also a biotechnology-specific machine. The advances in speed marked by these two supercomputers is indicative of a general trend in technology toward biologically-slanted systems. Some say the trend really started with the successful mapping of the human genome in 2000. Regardless of what spurred the current biotechnology race, most experts agree that the logical end of the surge is a state of DNA-based medicine. In several decades, we could make an appointment with our doctor for a quick DNA analysis to find out what diseases we're at risk for and pop a single, gene-targeting pill that eliminates all of those foreseeable risks.