Friday, August 31, 2012

WWE Star Cameron

WWE Star Cameron
Busted for DUI ...
Allegedly Tries to Bribe Cops




WWE superstar Cameron -- a member of the Funkadactyls -- allegedly offered police $10,000 to let her go after she was arrested for DUI last week ... this according to police.

TMZ obtained the arrest report filed by police in Tampa Bay, Florida ... which shows Cameron -- real name Ariane Nicole Andrew -- was arrested at 2:23 AM on Friday morning outside Tampa International Airport.

The report says Cameron blew a .20 ... more than twice the legal limit in Florida.

After cops took her into custody, the report says Cameron offered one of the officers $10,000 to "let her go because she would lose her job."

In the docs, cops say Cameron listed her employer as the WWE.

Cops say Cameron had a male passenger in the car ... who told police the two had been drinking martinis before getting in the car.

Cameron was booked for DUI ... but eventually released.

A rep for WWE ... "Ariane [Cameron] did not alert us to this matter, we are investigating and will take appropriate action."

Read more: http://www.tmz.com#ixzz24ysE3jk4

RNC Convention Workers

TAMPA, Fla. -- During these past four days at the RNC convention, janitors have worked around the clock picking up after delegates, conservative stars like Ann Coulter and Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), and the thousands of reporters in cavernous filing rooms. And many are doing so making less than minimum wage.

Carolyn Walker said she has been cleaning the convention center for 13 years. She had been making $8 per hour until a few years ago, when the cleaning contract went to another company, Cleanevent USA. The new company meant a new, downsized paycheck. She's now making minimum wage -- $7.67 per hour. But that wasn't the only hit to her wallet.

Walker said the company charges her $6 per week for uniforms. "It stinks to tell you the truth," she said. "We work very hard." It effectively means she's making less than Florida's minimum wage.

Larry Gilmore, 32, and Jean Baptiste, 27, recounted similar hits to their paychecks by Cleanevent. Baptiste said he's charged $11 per week for uniforms -- a thin blue short-sleeve shirt and dark pants.

As Rep. Paul Ryan delivered his acceptance speech on Wednesday night, Baptiste wheeled his giant can through the convention center, picking up trash left by reporters from The New York Times, CBS, The Huffington Post and other media outlets. All you heard in the massive room was Ryan's speech and the wheels on Baptiste's plastic trash can. He said he had only one complaint about the work. "It's good," he explained. "I just wish they paid more. I can't keep up with the rent."

Baptiste's rent in Tampa is $575. His electric bill can be as high as $160 per month. If he wants to park near the convention center for work, he -- and the others -- said they would be charged for the privilege. Baptiste said he does not use that parking garage.

Asked about the details of his paycheck, one worker, who refused to give a name, replied "So much money for the haves and so little money for the have-nots. I want you to note that distinction."




Mike Sheehan, Cleanevent's regional manager, said the convention has been a boon, providing enough work to effectively expand his company. He's utilized 105 people to clean up after the RNC -- including about 40 new workers hired for the convention.

Sheehan usually goes through a temp service to hire extra staff for big events. He said he may not do so anymore, adding that he plans on keeping a lot of the new janitors. The new workers, he said, aren't getting charged for uniforms, since they aren't regular employees. Only the longtime, steady employees like Walker are getting charged. "It's like five or six dollars" a week, he said.

Is the uniform charge fair? "No," Sheehan admitted. "It's better to just issue them and allow them to purchase extra shirts at cost. That's where I'm heading now."

Zandra Jones, 29, is one of the new janitors. She hasn't been hit with any uniform charge. Maybe, if Sheehan keeps his promise, she won't have to.

After two years of fruitlessly looking for work, filling out application after application, Jones landed a job with the company two weeks ago. She's already figured out what she likes best about the job. "Working. Just working period," she said. "Just having work."

The state Department of Labor couldn't be reached for comment after business hours on Thursday.

100

100 things that you did not know about Africa


1. The human race is of African origin. The oldest known skeletal remains of anatomically modern humans (or homo sapiens) were excavated at sites in East Africa. Human remains were discovered at Omo in Ethiopia that were dated at 195,000 years old, the oldest known in the world.

2. Skeletons of pre-humans have been found in Africa that date back between 4 and 5 million years. The oldest known ancestral type of humanity is thought to have been the australopithecus ramidus, who lived at least 4.4 million years ago.

3. Africans were the first to organise fishing expeditions 90,000 years ago. At Katanda, a region in northeastern Zaïre (now Congo), was recovered a finely wrought series of harpoon points, all elaborately polished and barbed. Also uncovered was a tool, equally well crafted, believed to be a dagger. The discoveries suggested the existence of an early aquatic or fishing based culture.

4. Africans were the first to engage in mining 43,000 years ago. In 1964 a hematite mine was found in Swaziland at Bomvu Ridge in the Ngwenya mountain range. Ultimately 300,000 artefacts were recovered including thousands of stone-made mining tools. Adrian Boshier, one of the archaeologists on the site, dated the mine to a staggering 43,200 years old.

5. Africans pioneered basic arithmetic 25,000 years ago. The Ishango bone is a tool handle with notches carved into it found in the Ishango region of Zaïre (now called Congo) near Lake Edward. The bone tool was originally thought to have been over 8,000 years old, but a more sensitive recent dating has given dates of 25,000 years old. On the tool are 3 rows of notches. Row 1 shows three notches carved next to six, four carved next to eight, ten carved next to two fives and finally a seven. The 3 and 6, 4 and 8, and 10 and 5, represent the process of doubling. Row 2 shows eleven notches carved next to twenty-one notches, and nineteen notches carved next to nine notches. This represents 10 + 1, 20 + 1, 20 - 1 and 10 - 1. Finally, Row 3 shows eleven notches, thirteen notches, seventeen notches and nineteen notches. 11, 13, 17 and 19 are the prime numbers between 10 and 20.

6. Africans cultivated crops 12,000 years ago, the first known advances in agriculture. Professor Fred Wendorf discovered that people in Egypt’s Western Desert cultivated crops of barley, capers, chick-peas, dates, legumes, lentils and wheat. Their ancient tools were also recovered. There were grindstones, milling stones, cutting blades, hide scrapers, engraving burins, and mortars and pestles.

7. Africans mummified their dead 9,000 years ago. A mummified infant was found under the Uan Muhuggiag rock shelter in south western Libya. The infant was buried in the foetal position and was mummified using a very sophisticated technique that must have taken hundreds of years to evolve. The technique predates the earliest mummies known in Ancient Egypt by at least 1,000 years. Carbon dating is controversial but the mummy may date from 7438 (±220) BC.

8. Africans carved the world’s first colossal sculpture 7,000 or more years ago. The Great Sphinx of Giza was fashioned with the head of a man combined with the body of a lion. A key and important question raised by this monument was: How old is it? In October 1991 Professor Robert Schoch, a geologist from Boston University, demonstrated that the Sphinx was sculpted between 5000 BC and 7000 BC, dates that he considered conservative.

9. On the 1 March 1979, the New York Times carried an article on its front page also page sixteen that was entitled Nubian Monarchy called Oldest. In this article we were assured that: “Evidence of the oldest recognizable monarchy in human history, preceding the rise of the earliest Egyptian kings by several generations, has been discovered in artifacts from ancient Nubia” (i.e. the territory of the northern Sudan and the southern portion of modern Egypt.)

10. The ancient Egyptians had the same type of tropically adapted skeletal proportions as modern Black Africans. A 2003 paper appeared in American Journal of Physical Anthropology by Dr Sonia Zakrzewski entitled Variation in Ancient Egyptian Stature and Body Proportions where she states that: “The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had the ‘super-Negroid’ body plan described by Robins (1983). The values for the brachial and crural indices show that the distal segments of each limb are longer relative to the proximal segments than in many ‘African’ populations.”

11. The ancient Egyptians had Afro combs. One writer tells us that the Egyptians “manufactured a very striking range of combs in ivory: the shape of these is distinctly African and is like the combs used even today by Africans and those of African descent.”

12. The Funerary Complex in the ancient Egyptian city of Saqqara is the oldest building that tourists regularly visit today. An outer wall, now mostly in ruins, surrounded the whole structure. Through the entrance are a series of columns, the first stone-built columns known to historians. The North House also has ornamental columns built into the walls that have papyrus-like capitals. Also inside the complex is the Ceremonial Court, made of limestone blocks that have been quarried and then shaped. In the centre of the complex is the Step Pyramid, the first of 90 Egyptian pyramids.

13. The first Great Pyramid of Giza, the most extraordinary building in history, was a staggering 481 feet tall - the equivalent of a 40-storey building. It was made of 2.3 million blocks of limestone and granite, some weighing 100 tons.

14. The ancient Egyptian city of Kahun was the world’s first planned city. Rectangular and walled, the city was divided into two parts. One part housed the wealthier inhabitants – the scribes, officials and foremen. The other part housed the ordinary people. The streets of the western section in particular, were straight, laid out on a grid, and crossed each other at right angles. A stone gutter, over half a metre wide, ran down the centre of every street.

15. Egyptian mansions were discovered in Kahun - each boasting 70 rooms, divided into four sections or quarters. There was a master’s quarter, quarters for women and servants, quarters for offices and finally, quarters for granaries, each facing a central courtyard. The master’s quarters had an open court with a stone water tank for bathing. Surrounding this was a colonnade.

16 The Labyrinth in the Egyptian city of Hawara with its massive layout, multiple courtyards, chambers and halls, was the very largest building in antiquity. Boasting three thousand rooms, 1,500 of them were above ground and the other 1,500 were underground.

17. Toilets and sewerage systems existed in ancient Egypt. One of the pharaohs built a city now known as Amarna. An American urban planner noted that: “Great importance was attached to cleanliness in Amarna as in other Egyptian cities. Toilets and sewers were in use to dispose waste. Soap was made for washing the body. Perfumes and essences were popular against body odour. A solution of natron was used to keep insects from houses . . . Amarna may have been the first planned ‘garden city’.”

18. Sudan has more pyramids than any other country on earth - even more than Egypt. There are at least 223 pyramids in the Sudanese cities of Al Kurru, Nuri, Gebel Barkal and Meroë. They are generally 20 to 30 metres high and steep sided.

19. The Sudanese city of Meroë is rich in surviving monuments. Becoming the capital of the Kushite Empire between 590 BC until AD 350, there are 84 pyramids in this city alone, many built with their own miniature temple. In addition, there are ruins of a bath house sharing affinities with those of the Romans. Its central feature is a large pool approached by a flight of steps with waterspouts decorated with lion heads.

20. Bling culture has a long and interesting history. Gold was used to decorate ancient Sudanese temples. One writer reported that: “Recent excavations at Meroe and Mussawwarat es-Sufra revealed temples with walls and statues covered with gold leaf”.

21. In around 300 BC, the Sudanese invented a writing script that had twenty-three letters of which four were vowels and there was also a word divider. Hundreds of ancient texts have survived that were in this script. Some are on display in the British Museum.

22. In central Nigeria, West Africa’s oldest civilisation flourished between 1000 BC and 300 BC. Discovered in 1928, the ancient culture was called the Nok Civilisation, named after the village in which the early artefacts were discovered. Two modern scholars, declare that “[a]fter calibration, the period of Nok art spans from 1000 BC until 300 BC”. The site itself is much older going back as early as 4580 or 4290 BC.

23. West Africans built in stone by 1100 BC. In the Tichitt-Walata region of Mauritania, archaeologists have found “large stone masonry villages” that date back to 1100 BC. The villages consisted of roughly circular compounds connected by “well-defined streets”.

24. By 250 BC, the foundations of West Africa’s oldest cities were established such as Old Djenné in Mali.

25. Kumbi Saleh, the capital of Ancient Ghana, flourished from 300 to 1240 AD. Located in modern day Mauritania, archaeological excavations have revealed houses, almost habitable today, for want of renovation and several storeys high. They had underground rooms, staircases and connecting halls. Some had nine rooms. One part of the city alone is estimated to have housed 30,000 people.
26. West Africa had walled towns and cities in the pre-colonial period. Winwood Reade, an English historian visited West Africa in the nineteenth century and commented that: “There are . . . thousands of large walled cities resembling those of Europe in the Middle Ages, or of ancient Greece.”

27. Lord Lugard, an English official, estimated in 1904 that there were 170 walled towns still in existence in the whole of just the Kano province of northern Nigeria.

28. Cheques are not quite as new an invention as we were led to believe. In the tenth century, an Arab geographer, Ibn Haukal, visited a fringe region of Ancient Ghana. Writing in 951 AD, he told of a cheque for 42,000 golden dinars written to a merchant in the city of Audoghast by his partner in Sidjilmessa.

29. Ibn Haukal, writing in 951 AD, informs us that the King of Ghana was “the richest king on the face of the earth” whose pre-eminence was due to the quantity of gold nuggets that had been amassed by the himself and by his predecessors.

30. The Nigerian city of Ile-Ife was paved in 1000 AD on the orders of a female ruler with decorations that originated in Ancient America. Naturally, no-one wants to explain how this took place approximately 500 years before the time of Christopher Columbus!

31. West Africa had bling culture in 1067 AD. One source mentions that when the Emperor of Ghana gives audience to his people: “he sits in a pavilion around which stand his horses caparisoned in cloth of gold: behind him stand ten pages holding shields and gold-mounted swords: and on his right hand are the sons of the princes of his empire, splendidly clad and with gold plaited into their hair . . . The gate of the chamber is guarded by dogs of an excellent breed . . . they wear collars of gold and silver.”

32. Glass windows existed at that time. The residence of the Ghanaian Emperor in 1116 AD was: “A well-built castle, thoroughly fortified, decorated inside with sculptures and pictures, and having glass windows.”

33. The Grand Mosque in the Malian city of Djenné, described as “the largest adobe [clay] building in the world”, was first raised in 1204 AD. It was built on a square plan where each side is 56 metres in length. It has three large towers on one side, each with projecting wooden buttresses.

34. One of the great achievements of the Yoruba was their urban culture. “By the year A.D. 1300,” says a modern scholar, “the Yoruba people built numerous walled cities surrounded by farms”. The cities were Owu, Oyo, Ijebu, Ijesa, Ketu, Popo, Egba, Sabe, Dassa, Egbado, Igbomina, the sixteen Ekiti principalities, Owo and Ondo.

35. Yoruba metal art of the mediaeval period was of world class. One scholar wrote that Yoruba art “would stand comparison with anything which Ancient Egypt, Classical Greece and Rome, or Renaissance Europe had to offer.”

36. In the Malian city of Gao stands the Mausoleum of Askia the Great, a weird sixteenth century edifice that resembles a step pyramid.

37. Thousands of mediaeval tumuli have been found across West Africa. Nearly 7,000 were discovered in north-west Senegal alone spread over nearly 1,500 sites. They were probably built between 1000 and 1300 AD.

38. Excavations at the Malian city of Gao carried out by Cambridge University revealed glass windows. One of the finds was entitled: “Fragments of alabaster window surrounds and a piece of pink window glass, Gao 10th – 14th century.”

39. In 1999 the BBC produced a television series entitled Millennium. The programme devoted to the fourteenth century opens with the following disclosure: “In the fourteenth century, the century of the scythe, natural disasters threatened civilisations with extinction. The Black Death kills more people in Europe, Asia and North Africa than any catastrophe has before. Civilisations which avoid the plague thrive. In West Africa the Empire of Mali becomes the richest in the world.”

40. Malian sailors got to America in 1311 AD, 181 years before Columbus. An Egyptian scholar, Ibn Fadl Al-Umari, published on this sometime around 1342. In the tenth chapter of his book, there is an account of two large maritime voyages ordered by the predecessor of Mansa Musa, a king who inherited the Malian throne in 1312. This mariner king is not named by Al-Umari, but modern writers identify him as Mansa Abubakari II.

41. On a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 AD, a Malian ruler, Mansa Musa, brought so much money with him that his visit resulted in the collapse of gold prices in Egypt and Arabia. It took twelve years for the economies of the region to normalise.

42. West African gold mining took place on a vast scale. One modern writer said that: “It is estimated that the total amount of gold mined in West Africa up to 1500 was 3,500 tons, worth more than $****30 billion in today’s market.”

43. The old Malian capital of Niani had a 14th century building called the Hall of Audience. It was an surmounted by a dome, adorned with arabesques of striking colours. The windows of an upper floor were plated with wood and framed in silver; those of a lower floor were plated with wood, framed in gold.

44. Mali in the 14th century was highly urbanised. Sergio Domian, an Italian art and architecture scholar, wrote the following about this period: “Thus was laid the foundation of an urban civilisation. At the height of its power, Mali had at least 400 cities, and the interior of the Niger Delta was very densely populated”.

45. The Malian city of Timbuktu had a 14th century population of 115,000 - 5 times larger than mediaeval London. Mansa Musa, built the Djinguerebere Mosque in the fourteenth century. There was the University Mosque in which 25,000 students studied and the Oratory of Sidi Yayia. There were over 150 Koran schools in which 20,000 children were instructed. London, by contrast, had a total 14th century population of 20,000 people.

46. National Geographic recently described Timbuktu as the Paris of the mediaeval world, on account of its intellectual culture. According to Professor Henry Louis Gates, 25,000 university students studied there.

47. Many old West African families have private library collections that go back hundreds of years. The Mauritanian cities of Chinguetti and Oudane have a total of 3,450 hand written mediaeval books. There may be another 6,000 books still surviving in the other city of Walata. Some date back to the 8th century AD. There are 11,000 books in private collections in Niger. Finally, in Timbuktu, Mali, there are about 700,000 surviving books.

48. A collection of one thousand six hundred books was considered a small library for a West African scholar of the 16th century. Professor Ahmed Baba of Timbuktu is recorded as saying that he had the smallest library of any of his friends - he had only 1600 volumes.

49. Concerning these old manuscripts, Michael Palin, in his TV series Sahara, said the imam of Timbuktu “has a collection of scientific texts that clearly show the planets circling the sun. They date back hundreds of years . . . Its convincing evidence that the scholars of Timbuktu knew a lot more than their counterparts in Europe. In the fifteenth century in Timbuktu the mathematicians knew about the rotation of the planets, knew about the details of the eclipse, they knew things which we had to wait for 150 almost 200 years to know in Europe when Galileo and Copernicus came up with these same calculations and were given a very hard time for it.”

50. The Songhai Empire of 16th century West Africa had a government position called Minister for Etiquette and Protocol.
51. The mediaeval Nigerian city of Benin was built to “a scale comparable with the Great Wall of China”. There was a vast system of defensive walling totalling 10,000 miles in all. Even before the full extent of the city walling had become apparent the Guinness Book of Records carried an entry in the 1974 edition that described the city as: “The largest earthworks in the world carried out prior to the mechanical era.”

52. Benin art of the Middle Ages was of the highest quality. An official of the Berlin Museum für Völkerkunde once stated that: “These works from Benin are equal to the very finest examples of European casting technique. Benvenuto Cellini could not have cast them better, nor could anyone else before or after him . . . Technically, these bronzes represent the very highest possible achievement.”

53. Winwood Reade described his visit to the Ashanti Royal Palace of Kumasi in 1874: “We went to the king’s palace, which consists of many courtyards, each surrounded with alcoves and verandahs, and having two gates or doors, so that each yard was a thoroughfare . . . But the part of the palace fronting the street was a stone house, Moorish in its style . . . with a flat roof and a parapet, and suites of apartments on the first floor. It was built by Fanti masons many years ago. The rooms upstairs remind me of Wardour Street. Each was a perfect Old Curiosity Shop. Books in many languages, Bohemian glass, clocks, silver plate, old furniture, Persian rugs, Kidderminster carpets, pictures and engravings, numberless chests and coffers. A sword bearing the inscription From Queen Victoria to the King of Ashantee. A copy of the Times, 17 October 1843. With these were many specimens of Moorish and Ashanti handicraft.”

54. In the mid-nineteenth century, William Clarke, an English visitor to Nigeria, remarked that: “As good an article of cloth can be woven by the Yoruba weavers as by any people . . . in durability, their cloths far excel the prints and home-spuns of Manchester.”

55. The recently discovered 9th century Nigerian city of Eredo was found to be surrounded by a wall that was 100 miles long and seventy feet high in places. The internal area was a staggering 400 square miles.

56. On the subject of cloth, Kongolese textiles were also distinguished. Various European writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries wrote of the delicate crafts of the peoples living in eastern Kongo and adjacent regions who manufactured damasks, sarcenets, satins, taffeta, cloth of tissue and velvet. Professor DeGraft-Johnson made the curious observation that: “Their brocades, both high and low, were far more valuable than the Italian.”

57. On Kongolese metallurgy of the Middle Ages, one modern scholar wrote that: “There is no doubting . . . the existence of an expert metallurgical art in the ancient Kongo . . . The Bakongo were aware of the toxicity of lead vapours. They devised preventative and curative methods, both pharmacological (massive doses of pawpaw and palm oil) and mechanical (exerting of pressure to free the digestive tract), for combating lead poisoning.”

58. In Nigeria, the royal palace in the city of Kano dates back to the fifteenth century. Begun by Muhammad Rumfa (ruled 1463-99) it has gradually evolved over generations into a very imposing complex. A colonial report of the city from 1902, described it as “a network of buildings covering an area of 33 acres and surrounded by a wall 20 to 30 feet high outside and 15 feet inside . . . in itself no mean citadel”.

59. A sixteenth century traveller visited the central African civilisation of Kanem-Borno and commented that the emperor’s cavalry had golden “stirrups, spurs, bits and buckles.” Even the ruler’s dogs had “chains of the finest gold”.

60. One of the government positions in mediaeval Kanem-Borno was Astronomer Royal.

61. Ngazargamu, the capital city of Kanem-Borno, became one of the largest cities in the seventeenth century world. By 1658 AD, the metropolis, according to an architectural scholar housed “about quarter of a million people”. It had 660 streets. Many were wide and unbending, reflective of town planning.

62. The Nigerian city of Surame flourished in the sixteenth century. Even in ruin it was an impressive sight, built on a horizontal vertical grid. A modern scholar describes it thus: “The walls of Surame are about 10 miles in circumference and include many large bastions or walled suburbs running out at right angles to the main wall. The large compound at Kanta is still visible in the centre, with ruins of many buildings, one of which is said to have been two-storied. The striking feature of the walls and whole ruins is the extensive use of stone and tsokuwa (laterite gravel) or very hard red building mud, evidently brought from a distance. There is a big mound of this near the north gate about 8 feet in height. The walls show regular courses of masonry to a height of 20 feet and more in several places. The best preserved portion is that known as sirati (the bridge) a little north of the eastern gate . . . The main city walls here appear to have provided a very strongly guarded entrance about 30 feet wide.”

63. The Nigerian city of Kano in 1851 produced an estimated 10 million pairs of sandals and 5 million hides each year for export.

64. In 1246 AD Dunama II of Kanem-Borno exchanged embassies with Al-Mustansir, the king of Tunis. He sent the North African court a costly present, which apparently included a giraffe. An old chronicle noted that the rare animal “created a sensation in Tunis”.

65. By the third century BC the city of Carthage on the coast of Tunisia was opulent and impressive. It had a population of 700,000 and may even have approached a million. Lining both sides of three streets were rows of tall houses six storeys high.

66. The Ethiopian city of Axum has a series of 7 giant obelisks that date from perhaps 300 BC to 300 AD. They have details carved into them that represent windows and doorways of several storeys. The largest obelisk, now fallen, is in fact “the largest monolith ever made anywhere in the world”. It is 108 feet long, weighs a staggering 500 tons, and represents a thirteen-storey building.

67. Ethiopia minted its own coins over 1,500 years ago. One scholar wrote that: “Almost no other contemporary state anywhere in the world could issue in gold, a statement of sovereignty achieved only by Rome, Persia, and the Kushan kingdom in northern India at the time.”

68. The Ethiopian script of the 4th century AD influenced the writing script of Armenia. A Russian historian noted that: “Soon after its creation, the Ethiopic vocalised script began to influence the scripts of Armenia and Georgia. D. A. Olderogge suggested that Mesrop Mashtotz used the vocalised Ethiopic script when he invented the Armenian alphabet.”

69. “In the first half of the first millennium CE,” says a modern scholar, Ethiopia “was ranked as one of the world’s greatest empires”. A Persian cleric of the third century AD identified it as the third most important state in the world after Persia and Rome.

70. Ethiopia has 11 underground mediaeval churches built by being carved out of the ground. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries AD, Roha became the new capital of the Ethiopians. Conceived as a New Jerusalem by its founder, Emperor Lalibela (c.1150-1230), it contains 11 churches, all carved out of the rock of the mountains by hammer and chisel. All of the temples were carved to a depth of 11 metres or so below ground level. The largest is the House of the Redeemer, a staggering 33.7 metres long, 23.7 metres wide and 11.5 metres deep.

71. Lalibela is not the only place in Ethiopia to have such wonders. A cotemporary archaeologist reports research that was conducted in the region in the early 1970’s when: “startling numbers of churches built in caves or partially or completely cut from the living rock were revealed not only in Tigre and Lalibela but as far south as Addis Ababa. Soon at least 1,500 were known. At least as many more probably await revelation.”

72. In 1209 AD Emperor Lalibela of Ethiopia sent an embassy to Cairo bringing the sultan unusual gifts including an elephant, a hyena, a zebra, and a giraffe.

73. In Southern Africa, there are at least 600 stone built ruins in the regions of Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa. These ruins are called Mazimbabwe in Shona, the Bantu language of the builders, and means great revered house and “signifies court”.

74. The Great Zimbabwe was the largest of these ruins. It consists of 12 clusters of buildings, spread over 3 square miles. Its outer walls were made from 100,000 tons of granite bricks. In the fourteenth century, the city housed 18,000 people, comparable in size to that of London of the same period.

75. Bling culture existed in this region. At the time of our last visit, the Horniman Museum in London had exhibits of headrests with the caption: “Headrests have been used in Africa since the time of the Egyptian pharaohs. Remains of some headrests, once covered in gold foil, have been found in the ruins of Great Zimbabwe and burial sites like Mapungubwe dating to the twelfth century after Christ.”

76. Dr Albert Churchward, author of Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man, pointed out that writing was found in one of the stone built ruins: “Lt.-Col. E. L. de Cordes . . . who was in South Africa for three years, informed the writer that in one of the ‘Ruins’ there is a ‘stone-chamber,’ with a vast quantity of Papyri, covered with old Egyptian hieroglyphics. A Boer hunter discovered this, and a large quantity was used to light a fire with, and yet still a larger quantity remained there now.”

77. On bling culture, one seventeenth century visitor to southern African empire of Monomotapa, that ruled over this vast region, wrote that: “The people dress in various ways: at court of the Kings their grandees wear cloths of rich silk, damask, satin, gold and silk cloth; these are three widths of satin, each width four covados [2.64m], each sewn to the next, sometimes with gold lace in between, trimmed on two sides, like a carpet, with a gold and silk fringe, sewn in place with a two fingers’ wide ribbon, woven with gold roses on silk.”

78. Southern Africans mined gold on an epic scale. One modern writer tells us that: “The estimated amount of gold ore mined from the entire region by the ancients was staggering, exceeding 43 million tons. The ore yielded nearly 700 tons of pure gold which today would be valued at over $******7.5 billion.”

79. Apparently the Monomotapan royal palace at Mount Fura had chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. An eighteenth century geography book provided the following data: “The inside consists of a great variety of sumptuous apartments, spacious and lofty halls, all adorned with a magnificent cotton tapestry, the manufacture of the country. The floors, cielings [sic], beams and rafters are all either gilt or plated with gold curiously wrought, as are also the chairs of state, tables, benches &c. The candle-sticks and branches are made of ivory inlaid with gold, and hang from the cieling by chains of the same metal, or of silver gilt.”

80. Monomotapa had a social welfare system. Antonio Bocarro, a Portuguese contemporary, informs us that the Emperor: “shows great charity to the blind and maimed, for these are called the king’s poor, and have land and revenues for their subsistence, and when they wish to pass through the kingdoms, wherever they come food and drinks are given to them at the public cost as long as they remain there, and when they leave that place to go to another they are provided with what is necessary for their journey, and a guide, and some one to carry their wallet to the next village. In every place where they come there is the same obligation.”

81. Many southern Africans have indigenous and pre-colonial words for ‘gun’. Scholars have generally been reluctant to investigate or explain this fact.

82. Evidence discovered in 1978 showed that East Africans were making steel for more than 1,500 years: “Assistant Professor of Anthropology Peter Schmidt and Professor of Engineering Donald H. Avery have found as long as 2,000 years ago Africans living on the western shores of Lake Victoria had produced carbon steel in preheated forced draft furnaces, a method that was technologically more sophisticated than any developed in Europe until the mid-nineteenth century.”

83. Ruins of a 300 BC astronomical observatory was found at Namoratunga in Kenya. Africans were mapping the movements of stars such as Triangulum, Aldebaran, Bellatrix, Central Orion, etcetera, as well as the moon, in order to create a lunar calendar of 354 days.

84. Autopsies and caesarean operations were routinely and effectively carried out by surgeons in pre-colonial Uganda. The surgeons routinely used antiseptics, anaesthetics and cautery iron. Commenting on a Ugandan caesarean operation that appeared in the Edinburgh Medical Journal in 1884, one author wrote: “The whole conduct of the operation . . . suggests a skilled long-practiced surgical team at work conducting a well-tried and familiar operation with smooth efficiency.”

85. Sudan in the mediaeval period had churches, cathedrals, monasteries and castles. Their ruins still exist today.

86. The mediaeval Nubian Kingdoms kept archives. From the site of Qasr Ibrim legal texts, documents and correspondence were discovered. An archaeologist informs us that: “On the site are preserved thousands of documents in Meroitic, Latin, Greek, Coptic, Old Nubian, Arabic and Turkish.”

87. Glass windows existed in mediaeval Sudan. Archaeologists found evidence of window glass at the Sudanese cities of Old Dongola and Hambukol.

88. Bling culture existed in the mediaeval Sudan. Archaeologists found an individual buried at the Monastery of the Holy Trinity in the city of Old Dongola. He was clad in an extremely elaborate garb consisting of costly textiles of various fabrics including gold thread. At the city of Soba East, there were individuals buried in fine clothing, including items with golden thread.

89. Style and fashion existed in mediaeval Sudan. A dignitary at Jebel Adda in the late thirteenth century AD was interned with a long coat of red and yellow patterned damask folded over his body. Underneath, he wore plain cotton trousers of long and baggy cut. A pair of red leather slippers with turned up toes lay at the foot of the coffin. The body was wrapped in enormous pieces of gold brocaded striped silk.

90. Sudan in the ninth century AD had housing complexes with bath rooms and piped water. An archaeologist wrote that Old Dongola, the capital of Makuria, had: “a[n] . . . eighth to . . . ninth century housing complex. The houses discovered here differ in their hitherto unencountered spatial layout as well as their functional programme (water supply installation, bathroom with heating system) and interiors decorated with murals.”

91. In 619 AD, the Nubians sent a gift of a giraffe to the Persians.

92. The East Coast, from Somalia to Mozambique, has ruins of well over 50 towns and cities. They flourished from the ninth to the sixteenth centuries AD.

93. Chinese records of the fifteenth century AD note that Mogadishu had houses of “four or five storeys high”.

94. Gedi, near the coast of Kenya, is one of the East African ghost towns. Its ruins, dating from the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, include the city walls, the palace, private houses, the Great Mosque, seven smaller mosques, and three pillar tombs.

95. The ruined mosque in the Kenyan city of Gedi had a water purifier made of limestone for recycling water.

96. The palace in the Kenyan city of Gedi contains evidence of piped water controlled by taps. In addition it had bathrooms and indoor toilets.

97. A visitor in 1331 AD considered the Tanzanian city of Kilwa to be of world class. He wrote that it was the “principal city on the coast the greater part of whose inhabitants are Zanj of very black complexion.” Later on he says that: “Kilwa is one of the most beautiful and well-constructed cities in the world. The whole of it is elegantly built.”

98. Bling culture existed in early Tanzania. A Portuguese chronicler of the sixteenth century wrote that: “[T]hey are finely clad in many rich garments of gold and silk and cotton, and the women as well; also with much gold and silver chains and bracelets, which they wear on their legs and arms, and many jewelled earrings in their ears”.

99. In 1961 a British archaeologist, found the ruins of Husuni Kubwa, the royal palace of the Tanzanian city of Kilwa. It had over a hundred rooms, including a reception hall, galleries, courtyards, terraces and an octagonal swimming pool.

100. In 1414 the Kenyan city of Malindi sent ambassadors to China carrying a gift that created a sensation at the Imperial Court. It was, of course, a giraffe.

Which game console should you buy?

Which game console should you buy?

This is an interesting read i guess i will buy an Ebox360


A lot has changed since the Xbox 360 debuted in November 2005. After what has seemed like dozens of upgrades, improvements, omissions, price drops, motion controllers, and bundles, the dust has settled (once again) and we're left with three competitively priced consoles.

Editors' note: This console buying guide was updated on November 23, 2011, for the holiday season.

Such an evenly matched trio of hardware brings up the ultimate question for prospective video game console buyers: which home console should you buy?

This question doesn't necessarily have a definitive answer. Quite frankly, the answer could be any of the three depending on what you're looking for. In other words, there is no default "best console." It's about finding the one that's right for you--and what will be the deciding factor in your case will ultimately depend on what you plan to use the console for. That said, in lieu of detailing every last bit of functionality that each console offers, let's discuss the type of person we think would benefit most from each console.

Nintendo Wii

• Nintendo Wii Hardware Bundle ($170-200)
• Nintendo Wii Mario Kart Bundle ($150)

Last year Nintendo introduced a new bundle for the Wii that included Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort, and a Wii Remote with MotionPlus built in. This year, the company has chopped $50 off the price and now offers a $150 Wii with just Mario Kart Wii bundled inside. Though the Wii isn't regarded as a "hard-core" gamer's console, the system has served up some pretty compelling titles over the past few years, with more-recent titles like Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Metroid Other M giving Wii owners something to cheer about. A growing trend with the Wii seems to be that of rebooted franchises from the company's past, like Donkey Kong Country Returns and Kirby's Epic Yarn. Not much has been seen in terms of pure innovation, but Nintendo seems content with rewarding its loyal fan base. However, we must admit that Nintendo seems to have left the Wii hanging with little to play since the announcement of the console's Wii U successor at E3 2011.

This notion was reinforced with the release of what's probably the Wii's last major title, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. We absolutely love the game, and think it's a fine way for the Wii to go out. That said, at this point in the game it's tough to recommend a new purchase simply because software support is on its last breath. While the Wii does have a respectable library, just know you'll only playing games from its past and the occasional WiiWare standout.

All things considered, the Wii has become best known for its addictive party games, the occasional fitness game, kid-friendly fun, and shooting titles that emulate light-gun arcade games. The number of first-party Nintendo titles is small, and a large number of third-party games are mostly written off as gimmicky cannon fodder.

The Wii's online multiplayer experience isn't anything to write home about, but we definitely recommend playing Mario Kart Wii online. Unfortunately, the Wii's 16-digit friend code system did not catch on with most gamers. The well-established Virtual Console offers an impressive number of classic games from various older gaming systems, and WiiWare provides a platform for inexpensive titles from independent developers.

Aside from games, the Wii doesn't offer much in terms of additional functionality. Only last year did the Wii obtain Netflix streaming, and it can't play DVDs or CDs. Besides Netflix, its only streaming-media compatibility comes from PlayOn's third-party PC software. A cheaper Wii that can't play GameCube titles was recently introduced in Europe, but Nintendo says it has no plans of releasing this system in North America.

Accessories for the Nintendo Wii can add up. The console supports up to four Wii remotes and Nunchuks (the system comes with one of each). Thankfully, Wii MotionPlus is now bundled in most new controllers, so purchasing a separate attachment is no longer needed. However, there are still plenty of accessories to purchase, and all this plus extra chargers and batteries can become quite pricey, creating a lot of hidden costs.

The Nintendo Wii is best for: Parents with children who are just beginning to enter the world of gaming; family gaming; an environment with a lot of people (dorm room or apartment with numerous roommates); loyal fans of classic Nintendo franchises.

The Wii is not the best choice for: Those who are looking for a game console that doubles as an all-purpose entertainment hub, want state-of-the-art HD graphics, enjoy a robust online community, and/or those who prefer a wide selection of adult-targeted titles.

Key Wii exclusives: All Zelda, Mario, Metroid, and first-party Nintendo games.

Microsoft Xbox 360

• Xbox 360 (4GB) ($200)
• Xbox 360 (4GB) with Kinect Bundle ($300)
• Xbox 360 (250GB) ($300)
• Xbox 360 (250GB) with Kinect Bundle ($400)\

The Xbox 360 still remains the better-selling of the two powerhouse consoles of this generation, but by a much smaller margin worldwide. This is partly because the system went on sale an entire year before the PlayStation 3 and because the console had a much stronger lineup of exclusives early on in its life cycle. Also, at launch, Xbox 360 was considerably more affordable than the expensive PlayStation 3. But a lot has changed since then.

With well over 20 million members worldwide, Xbox Live is the most complete online console experience available today. The caveat is that the "Gold" Membership tier--required for online gaming and access to the best perks--requires an annual fee of $50. (By comparison, the standard Sony and Nintendo online networks are free, though Sony does now offer a premium PSN experience called PlayStation Plus for the same yearly price.) That said, there are plenty of opportunities to save money on an XBL subscription, so make sure to keep an eye on the Xbox Dashboard for special deals.

Like Sony's PlayStation Network (PSN), Xbox Live offers downloadable games (both casual "Arcade" titles and full games), game add-ons (downloadable content, or "DLC"), and the capability to buy and rent TV shows and movies, many of which are in high-definition video. Some of the purchased videos can also be transferred to Microsoft's Zune portable media player. (Note that you'll need a hard drive to fully enjoy most of these features; the current "Slim" console includes a 250GB model, but it's a separate purchase for the 4GB model). A dashboard update also gave Xbox 360 owners the ability to use USB sticks as a means of storing media and game saves.

Back at E3 2010, Microsoft debuted a completely redesigned Xbox 360 console. Dubbed as the "Slim" or "S" console, the newer unit is 17 percent smaller than its predecessor, has built-in Wi-Fi, runs much quieter, and has a dedicated port for the Microsoft Kinect. This console is now the standard Xbox 360 system, while a $200 4GB unit has accompanied it on store shelves.

In terms of additional functionality, the Xbox 360 offers streaming Netflix, Facebook, and Twitter applications, in addition to Last.fm and ESPN content. You can stream digital media from a networked Windows PC through DLNA, and the 360 can double as a full-on Windows Media Extender for those running Windows Media Center on their PCs; third-party products such as PlayOn and TwonkyVision can also expand the 360's default streaming capabilities. Xbox 360 will also recognize most music players and hard drives, so you can manually plug these types of devices into an open USB port and play music, photos, and videos right on the console. However, unlike the Blu-ray-capable PS3, the Xbox 360 can only play standard DVD movies.

On December 6, 2011, the Xbox 360 will be getting a major dashboard update that will overhaul the system's look, which falls in line with Microsoft's new Metro UI. It will also introduce Bing content search and cloud storage for game saves and Xbox Live user profiles.

Beyond all of its impressive media capabilities, the Xbox 360 is also an excellent game machine. Most triple-A titles are available on the 360, save for a few PlayStation 3-only games, and the games generally look as good as or better than their PS3 counterparts. The console also has its fair share of exclusives, including the Gears of War, Halo, Forza, and Fable series. Also--especially for the past two summers--Microsoft has impressed us with some major exclusive Xbox Live Arcade titles like Bastion, Fruit Ninja Kinect, and Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet.

There are plenty of Xbox 360 accessories that can extend the overall cost of owning the system. Additional controllers and rechargeable batteries represent the core add-ons, but you can also spend money on wireless headsets, charging docks, and messaging keypads.

Note that the older Xbox 360 consoles have a notorious (and deserved) reputation for bad reliability, thanks to the "red ring of death" problem that afflicted far too many early models. However, the slim Xbox 360 has proved to be a much more reliable piece of hardware.

In an effort to compete with PlayStation Move and the Wii's motion control, Microsoft debuted the $150 Kinect accessory add-on (previously referred to as Project Natal). We like Kinect for its unique take on motion control, and the fact that it's nearly impossible to cheat or fool, unlike the Wii. Though it does have a large launch library, there are only a few titles really worth checking out. Also, Kinect requires much more space to play than any other motion system, so this should be the primary factor when deciding on a purchase. Almost a year after its initial launch, the Kinect gaming selection is still a bit scarce. We really like innovative titles like Fruit Ninja Kinect and Child of Eden, but Kinect's showing at E3 2011 left us a bit concerned for its immediate future. Still, games like the Dance Central and updates that allow Kinect to bring voice control to Xbox 360 apps keep it relevant.

The Xbox 360 is best for: People who want an easy-to-use interface; gamers who take online gameplay seriously; gamers who already have friends on Xbox Live; hard-core and casual gamers; anyone who wants a good all-in-one gaming and entertainment system; fans of full-body motion control; workout fiends.

The Xbox 360 is not the best choice for: Those who want the PS3's added value of built-in Blu-ray; do-it-yourselfers who want more media-viewing options.

Key Xbox 360 exclusives: The Halo, Fable, Forza, and Gears of War series; some Xbox Live Arcade titles like Bastion and Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet; small number of DLC for multiplatform games like Fallout: New Vegas.

Sony PlayStation 3

• PlayStation 3 (160GB) ($250)
• PlayStation 3 (320GB) ($300)
• PlayStation 3 (320GB) Move Bundle ($350)

There's no doubt about it, the PlayStation 3 did not get off to a great start when it was released in November 2006. Fast-forward five years, and the console has definitely righted the ship. The PlayStation 3 now offers a solid library of games (including the Uncharted, Killzone, InFamous, LittleBigPlanet, and Resistance series) and access to the PlayStation Store, and is one of the best Blu-ray players on the market. (It also plays DVD movies and CDs, of course.) Now with an entry-level price of just $250, it might be the best time to consider buying a PS3. Sony has strategically positioned the console with a competitive price and promising list of future titles.

Though the base plan is totally free, the PlayStation Network doesn't necessarily provide you with the best online gaming experience around, but if you don't consider such a thing important, it is more than sufficient. At E3 2010, Sony announced PlayStation Plus, a fee service that promises to enhance the overall PSN experience. We've had some time with PlayStation Plus and have to report that its benefits simply don't justify a $50 per year subscription.

Like Xbox Live, the PlayStation Store is host to tons of movies, TV shows, demos, and downloadable games. PlayStation 3 also offers Home, a Second Life sort of experience where you can set up shop in a virtual world. Sony had been hyping the feature for years, but PlayStation Home is now generally regarded as a dud despite the company's numerous attempts to revitalize it.

Just like the Xbox 360, there are plenty of ways to get digital media streamed over the console via a home network or a third-party product like PlayOn. You can also hook up a device via USB and play media that way as well. The PS3 offers Netflix, Hulu Plus, Vudu, NHL, MLB, NFL Sunday Ticket, and HBO content support.

Though the Xbox 360 and Wii have various accessories available, you probably will need to purchase only a few for the PS3. Aside from additional controllers, there is not much you'll need. (The biggest annoyance: you'll need an infrared-to-Bluetooth adapter if you choose to use the PS3 with a universal remote.) The console uses Bluetooth technology so you can use almost any headset for chatting purposes.

Sony has marketed the PS3 as an exceptional deal because of its built-in Blu-ray player. While getting a built-in Blu-ray player is one of the console's major selling points, its benefits to the gaming experience remain mixed. It offers game developers much more space to work with than a standard DVD, but that hasn't translated into a quantum leap in graphics quality--the PS3's graphics are essentially on par with those of the 360. Also, the Blu-ray drive's fixed speed is problematic: it requires many PS3 games to do a preliminary hard-drive installation when playing a game for the first time. To this day, some titles--including major ones like Gran Turismo 5--suffer from long load times.

Sony's answer to controller-based motion control is PlayStation Move, which it released September 19, 2010. Though Move feels a lot like the Nintendo Wii experience, it offers better precision control and adds HD graphics. Like Kinect, the Move's initial library of games is lacking, but motion junkies should find safe haven in first-party titles like Sports Champions and light-gun games like The Shoot. A year after its release, Move support has been implemented into a handful of existing PS3 titles. Its functionality is being incorporated into new games, but only a few upcoming titles have Move-only mechanics.

The PS3 also now supports 3D movies as well as a growing list of 3D games. Of course, you'll need a new 3D HDTV to enjoy this content, but it is the only console pushing the initiative.

The PS3 is best for: Hard-core and casual gamers who aren't concerned with the ultimate online experience; early adopters and fans of 3D; do-it-yourselfers; videophiles who need the latest and greatest in Blu-ray; content-conscious media consumers.

The PS3 is not the best choice for: Those who don't care about HD graphics or video.

Key PS3 exclusives: The Uncharted, InFamous, Killzone, LittleBigPlanet, Gran Turismo, and Resistance series.


more @ http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10365624-1/which-game-console-should-you-buy/

TATS

Thursday, August 30, 2012

RNC


Hordes of randy Republicans were expected to be a boon for Tampa’s many strips clubs, but owners and dancers are still waiting for their RNC stimulus package
Orgy of business at Sunshine State jiggle joints is a double D-sized bust



Scantily-clad beauties perform at Mons Venus strip club in Tampa on Tuesday. Strippers were promised a booming business with the Republican National Convention in town, but so far it's been a bust.

TAMPA — The wildly anticipated Republican nudie-bar bonanza has turned out to be a double D-sized bust.

Strippers across this mammary mecca were anticipating an orgy of business this week from the crush of conventioneers.

Instead, three days into the RNC, Tampa’s dancing beauties were still waiting for their stimulus packages.

“My friend told me I’d make $3,000 a night this week,” said a slinky brunette named Jordan, as she gazed dejectedly around an empty Mons Venus bar on Monday, the Isaac washout day in Tampa. “I've made $100 tonight and it's already 3 a.m.”

“I don't even know what I'm still doing here," she added. "This sucks."

The scene was no different at 2001 Odyssey, located just across the street, where some strippers were dealing with their own personal deficit crises.




“I don't even know what I'm still doing here," one Mons Venus stripper said. "This sucks."

A dancer named Sicily said she was actually down more than $100 after working Friday, Sunday and Tuesday. Strippers at 2001 Odyssey pay a stage fee every night — and Sicily said the club raised it from $50 to $100 this week.

"I wish I was going home with one dollar in my pocket," Sicily said. "That's sad."

Warren Colazzo, owner of Thee Dollhouse, had predicted that the convention haul would triple the cash brought in during previous Super Bowls hosted in Tampa.

But between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. Wednesday, his sleek club drew only one extremely drunk conventioneer in an ill-fitting suit who was seen being reprimanded by a burly security guard.

A pair of cocktail waitresses, in skin-tight American flag corsets and barely-there blue thongs, looked bored.

Asked how her week has been, Karen Kennard, an ample-chested blonde, broke into a pained smile.

“Hashtag 2012 RNC money myth,” quipped Kennard. "I've worked four Super Bowls. I was hoping to be inundated financially in Super Bowl proportions, but it definitely hasn't happened yet."

Not all of the delegates have acted like choir boys, of course. A smattering of randy Republicans have mixed canoodling with conventioneering.

A portly delegate in a white button-down shirt and khaki pants showed up at 2001 Odyssey Monday night still wearing his convention credentials.

Every five minutes or so, he disappeared into a back room to get a lap dance.

“That guy can't get enough,” one stripper remarked.

An hour or so later, a politico in a blue blazer emerged from the private VIP area tailed closely by a busty brunette. He made a beeline for the club's ATM machine and pulled out $400 before walking back out, his hand on the small of her back.

Monica Fox, a stripper at Mons Venus, said a pair of GOP bigwigs stopped by Monday afternoon — and one of them treated her like royalty.

"He had money, and he had no problem spending it," Fox said.

But she was one of the very lucky ones. At 4 a.m. Wednesday, a heavily tattooed stripper named Anna surveyed the scene at 2001 Odyssey — where a gaggle of girls were jostling for the attention of three guys in suits — and offered her take on why business was so bad.

“To be honest, I think a lot of them just hired escorts,” she said. “That's more their style.”




more @ http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/hordes-randy-republicans-expected-a-boon-tampa-strips-clubs-owners-dancers-waiting-rnc-stimulus-package-article-1.1147630

Strippers fighting

Kindle Fire sells out

Kindle Fire sells out ahead of Amazon event

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- What timing! Exactly one week before Amazon is expected to unveil a new Kindle line, the company announced on Thursday that its Kindle Fire tablet is sold out.

Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500) sent out press invitations last week for a Sept. 6 event in California. While Amazon didn't reveal the subject of the event, it's widely expected that the company will unveil new versions of the Fire tablet and Kindle e-readers.

The sell-out isn't all that surprising: Retailers often let stock sell out or offer steep discounts on merchandise that is about to be replaced with newer versions.

Thursday's press release about the Kindle Fire sell-out didn't reveal how many have been sold, as Amazon famously doesn't release Kindle unit sales. The company did say the Fire comprised 22% of U.S. tablet sales in its nine months on the market, though the source of Amazon's data is unclear. IHS iSuppli's analysis found that the Kindle Fire never held more than a 14% share of the tablet market, and sales have slipped in recent months.

The 7-inch Kindle Fire began shipping in November for $199, clearly aimed at undercutting Apple's (AAPL, Fortune 500) wildly popular $499 iPad. The Fire is geared towards media consumption: reading books and magazines, watching video and streaming music.

Among the rumors about next week's event: Amazon may announce a 10-inch Kindle Fire. That would be slightly bigger than the 9.7-inch screen on the iPad.

At the same time, Apple is rumored to be releasing a smaller version of the iPad at its own event sometime in September or October. The so-called "iPad Mini" will purportedly be a 7-inch device -- just like the current Kindle Fire.

Apple controlled more than two-thirds of the tablet market in the second quarter, according to iSuppli's most recent data. Samsung has captured about 9% of the market, and Amazon came in at the No. 3 spot with 4%. Rounding out the top 5 were Asus with 3% and Barnes & Noble (BKS, Fortune 500) at 2%.

It's a tough market to play in, littered with other tablets that sorely disappointed or died outright. In the most extreme example, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ, Fortune 500) killed off its TouchPad last year after just 49 days on the market.

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIMM) released its PlayBook tablet in April 2011 and immediately drew criticism for its unfinished feel. Motorola's Xoom debuted at $799, and sales were sluggish

niiiiice



unique Asian woman


PC Just Crashed

Your PC Just Crashed? Don’t Blame Microsoft



Good read from wired.com






A year ago, Stephen Jakisa was having some serious computer problems. It started while he was playing Battlefield 3, a first-person shooter game set in the near future. But soon even his web browser was crapping out every 30 minutes or so. He couldn’t even install software on the PC.

It got so bad that Jakisa — a programmer by profession, and no technical neophyte — thought he might have a virus, or maybe some seriously buggy software on his PC. But he decided to check things out with a friend, Ioan Stefanovici who happened to be writing his Ph.D. thesis on computer reliability.

After a bit of investigative work, Jakisa and Stefanovici traced the source of the problem: a bad memory chip on Jakisa’s PC. Because his computer had been running fine for about six months before the problems popped up, Jakisa hadn’t suspected the hardware until his friend talked him into running a special memory analysis tool. “I was really losing my mind,” he says, “If this were to happen to Joe Blow down the street who doesn’t know anything about computers, he would have been completely stumped.”

Jakisa pulled out the buggy memory module, and the computer has worked fine ever since.

When computers crash, buggy software usually gets the blame. But over the past few years, computer scientists have started taking a hard look at hardware failures, and they’re learning that another type of problem pops up more often than many people realize. That’s right: hardware bugs.

Chipmakers work hard to make sure their products are tested and working properly before they ship, but they don’t like to talk about the fact that it can be a struggle to keep the chips working accurately over time. Since the late 1970s, the industry has known that obscure hardware problems could cause bits to flip inside microprocessor transistors. As transistors have shrunk in size, it’s become even easier for stray particles to bash into them and flip their state. Industry insiders call this the “soft error” problem, and it’s something that’s going to become more pronounced as we move to smaller and smaller transistors where even a single particle can do much more damage.

But these “soft errors” are only part of the problem. Over the past five years, a handful of researchers have taken a long hard look at some very large computing systems, and they’ve realized that in many cases, the computer hardware we use is just plain broken. Heat or manufacturing defects can cause components to wear out over time, leaving electrons leaking from one transistor to another, or channels on the chip that are designed to transmit current simply break down. These are the “hard errors.”

The Power of ‘Soft Errors’

Scientists designing the next generation of computer chips are really worried about this soft-error problem, and that’s because of one major factor: power. As the next generation of supercomputers start to come online, they will have more chips and smaller components. And with all of these tiny transistors, it will take more and more energy to keep bits from flipping within these computers.

The problem is tied to basic physics. As chipmakers send electrons down smaller and smaller wires on their chips, the electrons simply escape, like drops of water bursting out of a leaky hose. The smaller the wires, the more electrons that leak out, and the more power it takes to keep everything working properly.

The problem is so tricky that Intel is working with from the U.S. Department of Energy and other government agencies to solve it. Using its future-generation 5-nanometer chipmaking processes, Intel will build the brains of supercomputers that are 1,000 times more powerful than today’s top machines by the end of the decade. But, right now, it looks like these super-systems will also be power hogs.

“We have a path to get there not worrying about power,” says Mark Seager, chief technology officer for the high-performance computing ecosystem at Intel. “But if you want us to address power too, that’s over and above our technical roadmap.”

For regular computer users like Stephen Jakisa, the world of bit-flips and soft errors is murky space. Chipmakers don’t like to talk about how often their products fail — they think of this information as a proprietary secret — and good studies are hard to come by. Often, technology companies prohibit their own customers from talking about hardware failure rates. “That’s been an area of active research in the industry,” says Seager. “We don’t talk about it much externally because it’s a very sensitive topic.”

Soft errors are one thing, but there are other problems that hardware makers have said even less about. According to a small team of researchers at the University of Toronto, when computer’s dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) fails, it’s more likely to be caused by old age or buggy manufacturing (these are hard errors) than the soft errors that come from cosmic rays.

In 2007, University of Toronto professor Bianca Schroeder got access to Google’s data centers, where she collected a treasure trove of information on how frequently the company’s custom-designed Linux systems crapped out. She found a lot more errors than they expected. And furthermore, about eight percent of Google’s memory chips were responsible for 90 percent of the problems. Sometimes it happened every few minutes.

Looking more closely, Schroeder’s team found that the bugs seemed to be concentrated on specific regions of the computer’s memory, and they tended to happen in older machines. The problems they uncovered were hard errors, not soft errors, and they were a much bigger deal than the U of T researchers had expected.

Schroeder and her team published a paper on their Google findings in 2009, and they followed up with a second paper earlier this year that found similar results on memory chips used by IBM Blue Gene Systems as well as on a Canadian supercomputer called SciNet.

On all of the systems, the DRAM failure rates were about the same, says Ioan Stefanovici, who co-authored the 2012 paper. Another paper, this one written by researchers at AMD, also found that hard errors were more common than soft errors in DRAM memory chips. But AMD, like Intel, hasn’t released any research on the failure rates of the static random-access memory (SRAM) that’s built into its general-purpose microprocessors.

“It’s not a new problem,” says Vilas Sridharan, a reliability architect at AMD and one of the authors of the AMD paper. “Errors in DRAM devices were first identified in 1979, but we’re still learning.”

The world’s largest DRAM maker, Samsung, said it did “not have any specific data they can share on this topic,” according to a company spokesman.

Did bad memory cause this Blue Screen of Death in Toronto? Photo: Ioan Stefanovici

Schroeder and Stefanovici say that chipmakers need to take these hard errors more seriously. Today’s high-end chips use a variety of tricks and techniques — things like error-correcting code — to recover from soft errors, but they’re not as well equipped to handle hard errors.

And that’s causing more problems than most people realize. High-end supercomputers might have the error-correcting code that fixes up bit-flips whenever they happen. But that’s not the case on the PC. “Most mobile devices and consumer-grade laptops and desktops don’t include error-correcting code, partly because the error model has been that errors in DRAM are mostly caused by soft errors,” says Stefanovici.

Because of his computer skills, Stefanovici gets tapped every now and then to diagnose bizarre computer crashes. He says he’s traced at least three issues over the past year to bad DRAM.

Two years ago, he was walking past Dundas Square — it’s Canada’s slightly muted take on New York’s Times Square — a big block filled with flashy signs and tourists in the heart of Toronto. Gazing up, he saw that one of the signs had gone blue — the sure sign of a computer crash. Stefanovici snapped a blurry shot of the screen with his BlackBerry and noted the error code. He isn’t positive, but judging from parity error displayed on the screen, he thinks that bad memory in the computer’s video card was to blame.

more @ http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/08/chip_errors/2/




Happy BirthDay





Wednesday, August 29, 2012

WWE Star Cameron

WWE Star Cameron
Busted for DUI ...
Allegedly Tries to Bribe Cops




WWE superstar Cameron -- a member of the Funkadactyls -- allegedly offered police $10,000 to let her go after she was arrested for DUI last week ... this according to police.

TMZ obtained the arrest report filed by police in Tampa Bay, Florida ... which shows Cameron -- real name Ariane Nicole Andrew -- was arrested at 2:23 AM on Friday morning outside Tampa International Airport.

The report says Cameron blew a .20 ... more than twice the legal limit in Florida.

After cops took her into custody, the report says Cameron offered one of the officers $10,000 to "let her go because she would lose her job."

In the docs, cops say Cameron listed her employer as the WWE.

Cops say Cameron had a male passenger in the car ... who told police the two had been drinking martinis before getting in the car.

Cameron was booked for DUI ... but eventually released.

A rep for WWE ... "Ariane [Cameron] did not alert us to this matter, we are investigating and will take appropriate action."

Read more: http://www.tmz.com#ixzz24ysE3jk4


bb




Blue


Tuesday, August 28, 2012

UnderWater

4 soldiers planned to assassinate the president

Prosecutor: Ga. murder case uncovers terror plot, 4 soldiers planned to take over U.S. government and assassinate the president

4 Fort Stewart soldiers, Michael Burnett, Isaac Aguigui, Anthony Peden and Christopher Salmon, formed F.E.A.R., an anarchist group plotting to overthrow the federal government. They spent $87,000 stockpiling weapons and killed Michael Roark and his girlfriend, Tiffany York, to protect their dark secret.


U.S. Army Sgt. Anthony Peden, 25, left, and Pvt. Isaac Aguigui, 19, are led away in handcuffs after appearing before a magistrate judge at the Long County Sheriffs Office in Ludowici, Ga. Prosecutors say a murder case against the four soldiers in Georgia has revealed they formed an anarchist militia within the U.S. military with plans to overthrow the federal government.
LUDOWICI, Ga. (AP) — Four Army soldiers based in southeast Georgia killed a former comrade and his girlfriend to protect an anarchist militia group they formed that stockpiled assault weapons and plotted a range of anti-government attacks, prosecutors told a judge Monday.

Prosecutors in rural Long County, near the sprawling Army post Fort Stewart, said the militia group composed of active duty and former U.S. military members spent at least $87,000 buying guns and bomb components and was serious enough to kill two people — former soldier Michael Roark and his 17-year-old girlfriend, Tiffany York — by shooting them in the woods last December in order to keep its plans secret.

“This domestic terrorist organization did not simply plan and talk,” prosecutor Isabel Pauley told a Superior Court judge. “Prior to the murders in this case, the group took action. Evidence shows the group possessed the knowledge, means and motive to carry out their plans.”

One of the Fort Stewart soldiers charged in the case, Army Pfc. Michael Burnett, also gave testimony that backed up many of the assertions made by prosecutors. The 26-year-old soldier pleaded guilty Monday to manslaughter, illegal gang activity and other charges. He made a deal to cooperate with prosecutors in their case against the three other soldiers.

Prosecutors said the group called itself F.E.A.R., short for Forever Enduring Always Ready. Pauley said authorities don’t know how many members the militia had.

Burnett, 26, said he knew the group’s leaders from serving with them at Fort Stewart. He agreed to testify against fellow soldiers Pvt. Isaac Aguigui, identified by prosecutors as the militia’s founder and leader, Sgt. Anthony Peden and Pvt. Christopher Salmon.

All are charged by state authorities with malice murder, felony murder, criminal gang activity, aggravated assault and using a firearm while committing a felony. A hearing for the three soldiers was scheduled Thursday.

Prosecutors say Roark, 19, served with the four defendants in the 4th Brigade Combat Team of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division and became involved with the militia. Pauley said the group believed it had been betrayed by Roark, who left the Army two days before he was killed, and decided the ex-soldier and his girlfriend needed to be silenced.

Burnett testified that on the night of Dec. 4, he and the three other soldiers lured Roark and York to some woods a short distance from the Army post under the guise that they were going target shooting. He said Peden shot Roark’s girlfriend in the head while she was trying to get out of her car. Salmon, he said, made Roark get on his knees and shot him twice in the head. Burnett said Aguigui ordered the killings.


Aguigui’s attorney, Daveniya Fisher, did not immediately return a phone call from The Associated Press. Attorneys for Peden and Salmon both declined to comment Monday.

Also charged in the killings is Salmon’s wife, Heather Salmon. Her attorney, Charles Nester, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Pauley said Aguigui funded the militia using $500,000 in insurance and benefit payments from the death of his pregnant wife a year ago. Aguigui was not charged in his wife’s death, but Pauley told the judge her death was “highly suspicious.”

She said Aguigui used the money to buy $87,000 worth of semiautomatic assault rifles, other guns and bomb components that were recovered from the accused soldiers’ homes and from a storage locker. He also used the insurance payments to buy land for his militia group in Washington state, Pauley said.

In a videotaped interview with military investigators, Pauley said, Aguigui called himself “the nicest cold-blooded murderer you will ever meet.” He used the Army to recruit militia members, who wore distinctive tattoos that resemble an anarchy symbol, she said. Prosecutors say they have no idea how many members belong to the group.

“All members of the group were on active-duty or were former members of the military,” Pauley said. “He targeted soldiers who were in trouble or disillusioned.”

The prosecutor said the militia group had big plans. It plotted to take over Fort Stewart by seizing its ammunition control point and talked of bombing the Forsyth Park fountain in nearby Savannah, she said. In Washington state, she added, the group plotted to bomb a dam and poison the state’s apple crop. Ultimately, prosecutors said, the militia’s goal was to overthrow the government and assassinate the president.

The Army brought charges against the four accused soldiers in connection with the slayings of Roark and York in March, but has yet to act on them. Fort Stewart spokesman Kevin Larson said he could not comment immediately on the militia accusations that emerged in civilian court Monday.

District Attorney Tom Durden said his office has been sharing information with federal authorities, but no charges have been filed in federal court. Jim Durham, an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Georgia, would not comment on whether a case is pending.



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/prosecutor-ga-murder-case-uncovers-terror-plot-4-soldiers-planned-u-s-government-assassinate-president-article-1.1145553?pgno=1#ixzz24ntTa3XB

Parts of Apple's Genius training manual

Parts of Apple's Genius training manual leaked

Just what does Apple's Genius tech support staff learn before talking to you? A freshly leaked training manual breaks it down.

One of the key parts of Apple's retail success has been its Genius Bar, its in-house support service that lets Apple product owners bring in their gear to get looked at.

As it's been explained by former executives, the idea for the bar initially befuddled users, though over the years it's become a defining feature, and an increasingly important one as the company's gadgets have moved away from user-replaceable parts.

But just what kind of training is involved to make it behind that bar? Tech chops for sure, but as an internal training document shows, quite a bit of social engineering too.

Gizmodo today posted portions of Apple's Genius Bar training manual, an internal document meant to train new employees in human interaction. In the pages that have been posted, this includes the words and phrases used to describe something as basic as a frozen machine.

Just don't use "frozen," it turns out. That's a no-no, according to a snippet that was posted. Instead, things like "unexpectedly quits," "does not respond," or "stops responding," would be better picks. Another such section provides instructions on appearing to feel empathy with someone who comes into the store with a broken -- err nonresponsive -- gadget, using language that will make the Genius sound more sincere.

To be sure, there's seemingly nothing controversial in the book, according to Gizmodo's account of the pages that go unseen. The blog only playfully deems it as something that "could easily serve as the Humanity 101 textbook for a robot university."

The leaked details, which Gizmodo says come from the latest version of the handbook, follow a story the outlet ran earlier this month about "the most corrupt Apple Store in America." That story featured former Apple retail employees discussing things like exploiting loopholes to get free iPhones, managers trading hardware for cosmetic surgery, and Geniuses intentionally damaging devices from problematic customers. That store was later outed as a Texas retail location by The Dallas Morning News.

The leak comes amid intensified focus on Apple's retail operations, which are now run by Apple Senior Vice President John Browett. Browett -- previously the chief executive at U.K. electronics retailer Dixons -- attempted to rejigger the staffing at some of Apple's retail stores earlier this year, resulting in widespread rumors of cut hours and even layoffs. Apple responded earlier this month by saying it was trying out a new staffing formula and that it had since reverted to the previous system. Nonetheless, a new report suggests there are still some budget cuts in place at the company's retail stores, and that things like in-store workshops and employee performance metrics have been tweaked considerably.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57501770-37/parts-of-apples-genius-training-manual-leaked/

Hackers

Hackers vow 'hellfire' in latest major data leak

Team GhostShell says it published one million records, allegedly from banks, government agencies, consulting firms and others -- and claims there's more to come.

A group of hackers has released a vast quantity of data from banks, government agencies, consulting firms and many others and promised more data leaks in the future.

"Team GhostShell's final form of protest this summer against the banks, politicians and for all the fallen hackers this year," the group, which calls itself -- you guessed it -- "Team GhostShell," wrote in a Pastebin post titled "Project HellFire" this weekend. "With the help of it's [sic] sub-divisions, MidasBank & the newest branch, OphiusLab. One million accounts/records leaked. We are also letting everyone know that more releases, collaborations with Anonymous and other, plus two more projects are still scheduled for this fall and winter. It's only the beginning."

It's unclear how much data was published from how many organizations, but security firm Imperva analyzed the data and said some of the breached databases contain more than 30,000 records.

"It's hard to say with precision just how much (data was stolen), but you can say this is a pretty significant breach," Rob Rachwald, director of security strategy at Imperva, told CNET in an interview today.

Whoever stole the data mostly used SQL injection attacks, common attacks that are easy for Web sites to protect against. The data includes administrator login information, usernames and passwords and files from content management systems, although it didn't appear to have much sensitive information in those files, Imperva said. "There was some vulnerability with a content management system that they were able to exploit across multiple locations and download file upon file upon file," Rachwald said.

Team GhostShell also offered -- to "anyone who's up for the challenge" -- six billion databases from a Chinese mainframe that it claims contained technology from China, Japan and possibly other countries; more than 100 billion databases from a mainframe at an unnamed U.S. stock exchange mainframe; and access points to three or four Department of Homeland Security servers. "The sensitive information isn't that great but it may be good for street cred,"the post says.

The leak, like so many others, highlights some of the amazingly lax password practices people and companies follow. "The passwords show the usual '123456' problem," the Imperva blog post said. "However, one law firm implemented an interesting password system where the root password, 'law321' was pre-pended with your initials. So if your name is Mickey Mouse, your password is 'mmlaw321'. Worse, the law firm didn't require users to change the password."


http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57501931-83/hackers-vow-hellfire-in-latest-major-data-leak/

Amazon

With Prime Service, Amazon Is Set to Crush Offline Retail

“Free” two-day shipping. Streaming video. An e-book lending library. All for $79 per year. Spelled out like that, Amazon Prime sounds like a weird ad hoc chimera of a product. Why those three things? And why that price?

Though the value proposition may come across as clunky, plenty of people are apparently sold. Amazon said Monday that it now ships more items via Prime’s two-day shipping than its free “Super Saver Shipping,” which gets you slower shipping but for no charge when you order at least $25 of stuff. I hesitate to follow Amazon’s lead and call its Prime two-day shipping “free,” since of course you are paying about $6.58 per month for the privilege — it’s cheap, but not free. Still, if you buy something from Amazon even just once a month, the math starts to make sense.

The math makes sense for Amazon, too, both on a practical and a more existential level.

If you’re already a regular Amazon shopper, getting your stuff quickly for cheap will likely make you buy more. The speed in itself is appealing, plus the more you spend, the more value you get out of that $79.

Stepping back and looking at Amazon’s current and future success, the more ways Amazon can reduce friction around shipping, the more likely you will view buying online as a viable substitute for going to the store. Amazon doesn’t say how many people actually subscribe to Prime, a practice for which the company has been criticized and which has raised concerns about how well it’s catching on. Investors and Amazon both hope the program succeeds, because it helps mitigate Amazon’s key disadvantage as a retailer: You can’t walk right out of the “store” with the item you purchased. The closer Amazon can get to that experience — the more it can blur the distinction between online and offline — the less likely you’ll be to head out the door to the shop down the street.

Amazon is experimenting with same-day delivery to make the line between itself and its brick-and-mortar competitors even fuzzier. Meanwhile, one of Amazon’s most important partners appears to be diversifying its bets that getting your stuff hours after you order it will catch on. British startup Shutl also announced Monday that the private equity arm of UPS has chipped in on a $2 million funding round that will help the same-day courier service launch in the U.S. next year. A grainy picture of the Golden Gate Bridge on Shutl’s homepage tells you all you need to know about which U.S. city will be graced first by the service. By the time Shutl rolls into town, couriers in San Francisco should already be super-busy: eBay is testing a same-day delivery option in the city, and at least one other startup has entered the San Francisco get-it-now fray.

Whether any of these services can scale remains to be seen. But if same-day delivery works, the last meaningful differences between online and traditional retailers will start to fall away. For same-day to work for Amazon, the company needs to bring more distribution points closer to where customers live. Put a big Amazon marquee atop these smaller, more abundant warehouses, and you’ve got an Amazon big-box. Meanwhile, to compete, old-line big-box stores like Best Buy and Target will need to offer same-day delivery on items ordered online. Voila: Their stores begin to function more like warehouses holding inventory.

However distasteful the image of Wall-E-style consumerism may seem, the ruthless digital efficiency of 21st-century logistics makes getting what you want when and where you want it without leaving your chair an ever-more satiable desire. If Amazon Prime can deliver on same-day delivery, shoppers will grow more accustomed to the “point-click-get” paradigm. Other retailers, online and off, will have no choice but to follow.


http://www.wired.com/business/2012/08/amazon-prime-primes-amazon-to-crush-offline-retail/

Monday, August 27, 2012

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Four painters hit by 10,000 volt electricity




Four painters hit by 10,000 volt electricity when moving Scaffold

All four were down with one managing to escape from the scene who survived. The other three died, one in hospital.

Google translate

Around 17:40 yesterday, located the urban water Nancun near the NICE factory with electric shock accident occurs in the region: four painters in moving a 9-meter-high scaffolding to accidentally touch one of ten thousand volt high-tension wires, two people were killed and two others were injured.


After the incident, the City People's Hospital emergency dispatch medical personnel rushed to the scene. In addition to a man has confirmed that died on the spot, the ambulance picked up another 3 from the field.


6:00 pm, reporters rushed to the NICE. The accident took place in the plant's northeast corner, No. 301, next to the warehouse.

Due to the strong current, the scaffolding installed at the bottom of plastic wheel even has melted and stuck to the ground. And even more shocking is that the man died on the spot lying under the scaffold, a charred face, the hair stood up, the body of white smoke emerge from time to time.

"A burst of 'pop' sound, was to die." According to eyewitnesses, the incident was the man who had also once kindled a fire, and later others take to the fire extinguisher before the fire to be extinguished.

It is understood that the four painters is not the the NICE company's employees were injured in the accident, just to No. 301 warehouse canopy painted. Afternoon when they are ready to move the paint job originally used scaffolding to repair a light bulb. Four people holding each the scaffolding of four feet, forward push with scaffolding, never even noticed that the top of the high-voltage wire, and eventually led to the tragedy.

Later, reporters rushed to the Municipal People's Hospital. After getting to know the reporter learned that, in which three people received treatment, one person has died from serious injuries, tragic death.

Li Hailiang is one of the two rescue came, Hunan, 25-year-old. After emergency treatment in the hospital, his vital signs remained stable. But he still shivering in shock.

Li Hailiang, recalled that just after 17:00 after work, he and three other workers arrange to repair NICE the factory warehouse canopy on the lamp, because the position of the lamp is relatively high, so the four of them pushed past the scaffolding. Li Hailiang, said: "It's like being struck by lightning as a black eye, and instantly fell down."

After more than a minute before he got up. He subconsciously fear again electricity to run out of go out into the plant. Li Hailiang said, that he had forgotten the pain, forget the cries only pray for someone to help, what they have done is completely unaware of.

It is understood that the four workers were three people from Hunan Province, the artificial Zhejiang Ji. Emergency department doctor told reporters that rescue came two men, Li Hailiang is relatively lucky, another because of pulmonary edema and other serious illness into the intensive care ward, Li Hailiang vital signs did not appear abnormal in two Li Hailiang no condition fluctuations within weeks, the hospital can give him to take the next steps.

Reporter Xu Guo true Sen Green