Burj Khalifa

Burj Khalifa (Arabic: برج خليفة‎ "Khalifa Tower"), known as Burj Dubai prior to its inauguration, is a skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and is currently the tallest structure in the world, at 828 m (2,717 ft)

Burj Khalifa has been designed to be the centrepiece of a large-scale, mixed-use development that would include 30,000 homes, nine hotels such as The Address Downtown Dubai, 3 hectares (7.4 acres) of parkland, at least 19 residential towers, the Dubai Mall, and the 12-hectare (30-acre) man-made Burj Khalifa Lake.

The decision to build Burj Khalifa is reportedly based on the government's decision to diversify from an oil based economy to one that is service and tourism based. According to officials, it is necessary for projects like Burj Khalifa to be built in the city to garner more international recognition, and hence investment.

Firesale

A fire sale is an unpopular term from popular fiction describing a three-stage coordinated attack on a country's transportation, telecommunications, financial, and utilities infrastructure systems. The attacks are designed to promote chaos and foster a leaderless environment. The term "fire sale" is used because "everything must go".

The first part of a fire sale consists of shutting down transportation, street signals, aircraft, highways, trains. The goal for this first part of the attack is to throw the public into chaos, making roads inaccessible, possibly for preventing emergency services to assist.
The second part of the attack would consist of shutting down the financial system of a country, such as the stock market, government agencies, and local law enforcement.
The last part of a fire sale involves the termination of all utilities and telecommunications in the whole country including phones, sat-coms, electricity, water, nuclear, solar, and anything else that requires a power source (except batteries, as it would be difficult if not impossible to shut down all batteries). The final result of all three steps completed would leave the country or community in total chaos, making it extremely vulnerable.

Fourth of July

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the chamber will cancel its July 4th recess next week, a decision aimed at pressuring negotiators to reach a deal on the looming debt limit.While the move throws a wrench into long-held plans by senators on both sides of the aisle, it also shows Reid is aware of the optics of taking a week off while the nation careens toward a potential debt default.Independence Day, commonly known as the Fourth of July, is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, declaring independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. Independence Day is commonly associated with fireworks, parades, barbecues, carnivals, fairs, picnics, concerts, baseball games, family reunions, political speeches and ceremonies, and various other public and private events celebrating the history, government, and traditions of the United States. Independence Day is the national day of the United States.

Canada Day

Typically, Canada Day celebrations include parades, fireworks, barbecues and other get-togethers. Get the complete Canada Day Checklist, including lyrics to O Canada in French and English.
Schools, banks, government offices and many other stores and businesses are closed on July 1st. Call ahead to restaurants, stores and tourist attractions to confirm Canada Day hours.
History
On June 20, 1868, Governor General the Viscount Monck issued a royal proclamation asking for Canadians to celebrate the anniversary of the confederation. However, the holiday was not established statutorily until 1879, when it was designated as Dominion Day, in reference to the designation of the country as a Dominion in the British North America Act. The holiday was initially not dominant in the national calendar; up to the early 20th century, Canadians thought themselves to be primarily British, being thus less interested in celebrating distinctly Canadian forms of patriotism. No official celebrations were therefore held until 1917—the golden anniversary of Confederation—and then none again for a further decade.
In 1946, Philéas Côté, a Quebec member of the House of Commons, introduced a private member's bill to rename Dominion Day as Canada Day. His bill was passed quickly by the House of Commons but was stalled by the Senate, which returned the bill to the Commons with the recommendation that the holiday be renamed The National Holiday of Canada, an amendment that effectively killed the bill.

Haiti Earthquake

Approximately 35,000 households in Haiti have received 'clean water' buckets - comprises a chlorine solution and an RFID tag of five liters bucket for handling and storage of water - the charity Deep Springs International (DSI).
On each bucket has an RFID tag is read during the regular visits of community-based health workers NFC-equipped Nokia 6212 phones. Just the phone reads the tag of the bucket and the administration of the visits, they are measuring the amount of chlorine in the water and key it into the handset.
The health of employees then answered a questionnaire on-device and sends the information back to the DSI headquarters via SMS. Previously this task was done using paper forms which was time consuming and error prone.
Given the limited financial and staff resources DSI, more accurate tracking of these families need careful monitoring (as opposed to those who are more diligent in cleaning their water) is expected to help the organization better allocate its resources.
Haiti has long struggled to provide clean drinking water to over 9.7 million inhabitants, a situation exacerbated by the devastating earthquake last January and more recently by a cholera outbreak that the United Nations says has claimed over 2,500 lives since October.
Whereas the most promising short-term solution to this problem is the treatment of household water with chlorine, getting these life-saving chemical families in a country held back by poor transport and communication very difficult.
Aid agencies like Oxfam have concentrated their efforts in make-shift camps set up for the tens of thousands who lost their homes set. But for those who stay in the more inaccessible rural areas, if only to them is a challenge in itself.
Aid workers have said that without regular visits - every month or so - rural Haitians to return to drinking impure water, which promotes spread of cholera and diarrhea.
Scientific American reported that Nokia has contributed to the project by providing the 6212-model specifically for this project because it is equipped with NFC, and because it is not desirable high-end features, such as a touch-screen interface, making it less likely to be stolen from DSI employees.
More recently Nokia has an additional U.S. $ 24,500 for the project to expand beyond the initial pilot phase. The mobile phone giant hopes to soon decide whether to stick with the now discontinued 6212 phone as the project grows or DSI to provide the newer C7 NFC-equipped device that has a touch screen.

Twitter Status

Social networking platform Twitter has suffered intermittent disruptions to its service and what it called an 'elevated error rate'.
Twitter said the social platform was having stability issues worldwide.
The company's status blog said users might experience some problems loading twitter.com and with Twitter clients.
Twitter support said it was aware of the elevated error rates and was taking action.
Earlier, the disruptions affected RTÉ.ie's General Election constituency service.This is the first time for an extended Twitter outage in quite a long time. In the old days of Twitter outages, we would all hop on the bus to Friendfeed but that is no longer an option since many have left that service.

The Lunar Eclipse December 2010

Last December 13, 2010, star gazers and sky watchers enjoyed the bright Geminid meteor shower. For those who missed watching and witnessing this phenomenon, don’t fret because this December 21, 2010 there will be another meteor shower – the Ursids meteor shower according to space.com.

The Ursids meteor shower aren’t supposedly bright enough as the Geminid, but the stars and the moon are aligned on a very nice position on this night that the Ursids meteor shower will be visible.

There will be a Lunar Eclipse on December 20 or 21 depending on the area and thus, we will have a darker sky, but the stars will be brighter and the meteor shower seen. Do refer to the diagram above to see in which countries the Lunar Eclipse December 2010 can be seen.

NComputing

The NComputing solution separates a desktop PC environment from a physical machine to create a client-server computing model. That is, a user's desktop is hosted remotely and accessed via a access device over the network. A user no longer has a physical PC.
Windows XP instead of Windows Server software
Only under very limited circumstances. If you (the customer) have licensed the appropriate number of Windows Server operating system and associated Client Access Licenses for simultaneous access by multiple users to the Licensed Computer, you may install and run the NComputing vSpace Software on a separately licensed Windows XP Client operating system in lieu of the Windows Server operating system. You may only install and use either the Windows Server operating system software or the Windows XP Client operating system software but not both. Note that while Microsoft allows this limited use of the Windows XP client operating system configuration under these specific circumstances, support for NComputing’s vSpace software running on Windows XP is solely provided by NComputing. Microsoft does not provide any support for NComputing vSpace Software or for the Windows XP Client operating system in this configuration; you should seek support from NComputing for issues relating to the NComputing vSpace Software and its use with the Windows XP Client operating system.source:http://www.ncomputing.com/

Comcast Email

Nov 05, 2010 (SmarTrend(R) News Watch via COMTEX) -- Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSK) traded in a range yesterday that spanned from a low of $19.60 to a high of $19.98. Yesterday, the shares gained 2.00%, which took the trading range above the 3-day high of $19.58 on volume of 5.4 million shares. Often times after large one-day gains, short term traders will seek to take profits and, as such, investors should be cautious.

Shares of Comcast are currently trading above their 50-day moving average (MA) of $17.32 and above their 200-day MA of $17.03. Look for the MA to provide support for a short-term pullback in the shares.

SmarTrend has the shares in an Uptrend and expects the share price to pullback toward the $19.58 support level. Afterwards, we expect it to move upward with its peers in the SmarTrend CATV Systems industry.source:http://www.zacks.com

Zabasearch

ZabaSearch, a leading people search engine, today announced ZabaSphere, a real-time alert based system that enables users to find out who and when someone searches for them online by their name or social security number. ZabaSearch is bringing a new level of digital transparency to consumers that empowers them to take control over their digital lives.ZabaSphere is a free personal online monitoring and tracking service that enables users to manage the information that is available about them online and what shows up in search engine results for their name. ZabaSphere emails a ZabaAlert when the consumer's name is searched in ZabaSearch, Google, Bing and other locations. The consumer will be provided with information about the person searching on their name. ZabaSphere also enables users to view their own personal monitoring page where they can view historical ZabaSphere activity and manage ZabaAlert email notifications.

Zaba Search is a comprehensive search engine that searches for people related information from the millions of public records that exist in various places such as social sites, government records, public records, address and phone directories, business profiles and more. ZabaSearch's people search can provide more relevancy than traditional white pages or general purpose search engines because the search experience is optimized for people search. ZabaSearch's people search matches names and information across a variety of databases intended to produce more relevant, comprehensive and accurate results than general searches making it a better experience for consumers. source: http://www.sfgate.com/

Columbus Day Closings

Columbus Day is celebrated on the second Monday of every October and this year it falls on the 11th of October, 2010. Columbus Day is mostly a national holiday but still there are some offices and banks which remain open on this day while others honor this day by remaining closed.

If you are planning to carry out your day-to-day operations on Columbus Day, then you first better check that what will remain open on this day and what will be closed.

Most of the federal and state workplaces will be closed on Columbus Day but the situation varies from state to state. On the other hand, most of the municipal workplaces will be open today. The U.S. Postal Service has its day off on Columbus Day, so there will be no mail delivery today. On the other hand, the majority of the public libraries will be open.

Shops, grocery stores and shopping malls will mostly remain open on normal hours during Columbus Day.source:http://www.allvoices.com/

Yahoo Down Because Of Server Hangup

Yahoo Down Because Of Server Hangup – The front page of Yahoo was down throughout the day. The news quickly made its way to the social networking websites, including Twitter, where Yahoo being down became a trending topic. It was the first time that the homepage of Yahoo had suffered downtime in more than a decade, leading some experts to speculate that something could be seriously wrong with the website. Luckily for Yahoo, who is currently in the middle of buyout discussions, they were able to identify the problem and get things running smoothly very quickly after the reports surfaced.

Most individuals who attempted to load the website received the “Connection Refused” error. Most of their subsidiary sites including their Yahoo mail program continued to work throughout the outage.

Yahoo posted a statement shortly after the outage was reported saying that they were looking into the issue and were aware that the site was down. It was not immediately clear what might have caused the outage, but Yahoo was able to respond quickly to the issue and get the site working again fairly quickly.source:http://news.mwza.com

The outage must have looked bad because Yahoo has been rumored to be in the middle of buyout talks with AOL. Some joked that perhaps the site was coming down so that AOL could put their logo on it. Yahoo has not officially confirmed any buyout talks but rumors have continued to run rampant throughout the process, leading most to conclude that a buyout is something that Yahoo would at least be willing to discuss.

Brooklyn Bridge Closed Due to Suspicious Packages, Now Reopened

The Brooklyn Bridge was closed to pedestrians and cars due to the discovery of suspicious packages Friday. Reports indicate that there may have been two packages, one on each side of the bridge. Cops were worried that these may have been bombs of some sort.After the police handled the packages, the bridge was reopened to commuters.

Geohot Is Back

The world famous computer hacker Geohot is back and he’s already making waves.

Geohot next week will be releasing an exploit to jailbreak any Apple iDevices. This included the iPad, iPhones, and the new iPad Touch. This is for people that don’t like the current Apple operating system and are confident enough in what they are doing to jailbreak the devices.

The new Geohot tool is named as Limera1n. It is expected to be out next week, and if you are a hacker, you will know where to get it.

Geohot says he will provide a guide and instructions on how to download and install the expolit on the web, and if you follow him on Twitter.http://www.techjackal.net/internet/2010/10/09/geohot-is-back/

Health Tips

Over the past few years there has been a tremendous increase of nutritional liquid supplements on the market. Many of these products advertise high levels of absorption, claiming that they are much easier to digest than tablets. Some manufacturers even claim that they have a bioavailability rate of 100%.

Although there are some good companies in the supplementary industry, you should take most of these claims with a grain of salt. Most companies make misleading or exaggerated claims so they can sell their products for higher prices. To avoid being taken advantage of, individuals should understand the basic principles behind nutrients to help determine the true efficiency and bioavailability of each supplement. source:http://www.healthiertomorrow.org/

'Here You Have' Email Virus Spreading Rapidly

If, as I did, you get a message in your email box today with the subject line saying, "Here you have", do not open it and delete it from your inbox immediately. significant percentage of corporate email users in the United States are being deluged with a strong and quickly spreading virus today that appears to be from somebody in your company and/or contact list. The email implies that they are sending you a link to a document . The body of the virus laden message reads, "Hello: This is The Document I told you about, you can find it Here.http://www.sharedocuments.com/.While the origin of the 'here you have' email virus is not yet known, nor is it the extent of its spread known, it is clear that a large number of email inboxes, mostly on corporate email systems have been infected with it.

The motivation of some to create email viruses is not always clear. More often than not, it is a prank, albeit it a serious one as it saps productivity and could cause widespread network problems if not handled the right way.

As the country faces the 'here you have' email virus today, hopefully the word is spreading to as many people as possible to delete the message without opening it. Opening it will generally result in everybody in your contact list getting the message sent to them...allowing the 'here you have' email virus to continue its spread before being shut down.Source: Twitter.com

Labor Day

This Labor Day weekend, job prospects appear about as inviting as the leftover potato salad. But President Obama found encouragement in the Friday jobs report for August.
Despite a rise in unemployment to 9.6 percent and a total loss of 54,000 jobs (farewell, census workers), the private sector created 67,000 jobs actually last month. This is considerably more than economists expected and the eighth month of the private sector increases.
"Jobs are created. They're just not as fast as they need to be made," said Obama. "We just have to accelerate."
No argument there. Indeed, it takes 125,000 new jobs per month just to growth in the number of employees agree.
The president will lay out some ideas on that next week, including, reportedly, tax relief for small businesses that drive job growth. Tax cuts would be a move away from the White House's strategy of stimulus spending by the government-created jobs.
To date, the administration and Congress generally followed Keynesian principles require the government pumps in money when the economy should teach.
Money from the 2009 Recovery Act, which cost an estimated 814 billion U.S. dollars, helped state and local governments to keep public employees on the payroll, unemployment assistance, paid for infrastructure projects, and provided that the individual and business tax breaks.
According to the independent Congressional Budget Office, the Recovery Act created or preserved 1.4-3.3 million jobs in the second quarter.
But it is not a "summer recovery", as promised. Some claim that the Greek debt crisis threw a wrench in the weak recovery from disturbance of the show, then drove down consumer confidence. Others claim that stimulus was the wrong tool - what was needed was the kind of relief that the Obama administration is now apparently considering.

One idea is a temporary tax holiday for small businesses. It would be the employers exempted from payment of social security and other taxes on employees, making hiring cheaper. Depending on factors such as how long the tax holiday would last - if too short, it will not be business concerns about the longevity and strength of a recovery to overcome - it would make the federal budget more than 300 billion U.S. dollars cost.
The administration is also talking about the ongoing restoration of the lapsed research and development tax credit. This incentive rewards companies that research new technologies at home in the United States. That can cost about 100 billion U.S. dollars over the next 10 years.
Given the slow economic growth and persistent unemployment, hoping that Obama was two-pronged support for helping companies to hire and grow in America to find. He must be able, if he offers a way to pay for his ideas. It is important to voters who worry about the deficit pile-on.
Even if Obama can balance the math, the President may be unable to political balance. The subject of tax cuts has generally a wedge issue for the November elections.
Republicans argue that all of the Bush-era tax cuts - set to expire at the end of this year - should be extended. Obama wants to extend tax relief only for those families earning less than $ 250,000. It is time for the rich to pay, says the president, but Republicans replied that "the rich also" many small business owners who would be hurt by an increase in the tax contains.

GOP lawmakers would accept payroll tax relief for small businesses in exchange for the approach of the Bush tax cuts for Obama? Or would they prefer his planned tax increases on higher incomes as a campaign theme?

Democrats would be willing to reduce government spending in order to pay for the kind of business tax cuts the President has in mind (as, indeed, she asks him to make such a sacrifice)?

This is the kind of wrangling that voters can expect to see in the coming weeks. What they want is less bickering, more jobs.

Dubai Plane Crash

Two crew members aboard an American UPS cargo plane are believed to have been killed after the aircraft crashed in Dubai today.

According to a United Arab Emirates official who appeared on local television station al-Arabiya, the plane was attempting to land at Dubai International Airport when it crashed due to technical problems. Witnesses reported seeing the aircraft setting fire to vehicles as it crashed and going up in a fireball. Some witnesses told Al-Jazeera that they had seen a fire on the aircraft before it crashed.

UPS spokeswoman Kristen Petrella said the Boeing 747-400 went down at about 8pm and was en route to the UPS hub in Cologne, Germany. Although the company has not officially confirmed casualties, it said two crew members were on board. "This incident is very unfortunate and we will do everything we can to find the cause. Our thoughts go out to the crew members involved in the incident and their families," UPS said in a statement.

Although local reports said the plane had come down near a busy highway intersection south-east of the airport, posters on the Professional Pilots Rumour Network (PPRN) suggest the aircraft went down near an area known as Silicon Oasis. The state news agency, Wam, reported the crash in an unpopulated desert area.

One poster on the PPRN said: "Just five minutes ago. I heard and saw an aircraft, possibly an airliner going down in Dubai near Silicon Oasis. It has just over-flown my house and [there was] a big fireball."UPS, a courier company based in US city of Atlanta, confirmed in a statement that one of its cargo planes had been involved in an accident in Dubai and said it was working to obtain more details.MrMachfivepointfive wrote on PPRN: "UPS. Declared Mayday. Was on approach 30L and then veered off course. Last radar hit showed descending through 500' doing 250kts."

In October 2009, a Sudanese Boeing 707 cargo plane crashed in the desert outside Dubai, killing six crew members. Emirati regulators have since banned Azza Transport, the plane's Sudanese owner, from operating in the country.

Google Voice

On Wednesday, the Web giant announced that American users of its Gmail Web service could call numbers in the United States and Canada for free from within their browsers. Calls elsewhere cost less than many traditional long-distance domestic calls: You pay 2 cents a minute to call Ireland, Korea, Argentina and many other countries. (Google's rates top out at 99 cents a minute for those calling the island nation of Nauru.)

The Skype Internet-calling service charges slightly more for international calls, but it also charges about 2 cents a minute for domestic calls.

Gmail's rates should be familiar to users of Google's free Google Voice service, a separate option that the Mountain View, Calif., company only opened to the public in June. But using Google Voice requires logging into a Web site or launching a program on your phone (if one is available for it) and, in some cases, waiting for Google to connect your call.

Calling from within Gmail, by contrast, requires nothing more than installing a small plug-in program (available for Windows XP or newer, Mac OS X 10.4 or newer and some versions of Linux) and logging into Gmail. Click the "Call phone" link to the left of your inbox, type in a number, click the big blue "Call" button and things proceed as if you had just finished spinning a Bell System phone's rotary dial.

If you have a Google Voice account, the other person will see that number in their caller ID. You can also answer their calls from within Gmail; an incoming call will generate an alert in the bottom right corner of the Gmail window, which you can click to answer.

fiba world championship 2010

USA Team overcame a relatively slow start to cruise past Croatia, 106-78, in their first preliminary game of the 2010 FIBA World Championship. This was a rematch of the 1992 Olympic gold medal game, which, of course, the Dream Team won to capture the gold.

Croatia took a 19-18 lead in the first half, but Kevin Durant and company responded with a run that game them a 48-26 lead at halftime. Durant was the game's top scorer, but Team USA spread the ball around pretty evenly. Here are game stats from USA's top scorers:

Kevin Durant: 14 points, 6 rebounds, 3 assists
Eric Gordon: 13 points, 1 steal
Chauncey Billups: 12 points, 3 rebounds, 2 assists
Russell Westbrook: 11 points, 3 rebounds, 4 assists
Rudy Gay: 10 points, 4 rebounds

With this win, Team USA is now 1-0 in Group B standings, which places them at the top alongside Slovenia. At 2:30 P.M. Eastern, Group B action will continue when Brazil plays Iran.

Here are Team USA's remaining Group B games:

Sunday, August 29: Slovenia
Monday, August 30: Brazil
Tuesday, September 1: Iran
Wednesday, September 2: Tunisia