Saturday, June 21, 2008
NHK Projector Features Insane 7680 x 4320 (8K) Resolution
Friday, June 20, 2008
Euro 2008 Kicks Economies Up a Notch
The economic impact of the three-week soccer championship is expected to exceed $2.15 billion for participating countries, including hosts Austria and Switzerland. by Mark Scott
Franck Ribéry:NO,Henry,please
As the U.S. gears up for the NBA Finals, other sports-crazy fans around the world will turn their attention to the three-week European soccer championship in Austria and Switzerland, the third-most-watched global sporting event after the Summer Olympic Games and soccer's World Cup Finals.
While the championship, known as Euro 2008, brings together Europe's top 16 national soccer teams, its widespread appeal makes the contest a truly global phenomenon. The Union of European Football Assns. (UEFA) expects TV audiences will top 8 billion worldwide for the matches held between June 7 and June 29. More than 100 million visitors are expected to visit the championship's official Web site, a fourfold increase over the last event held in Portugal in 2004.
Such exposure means big bucks for Europe's economy. According to Simon Chadwick, director of the Birkbeck Sport Business Centre at the University of London, Euro 2008's economic impact on UEFA's 52 members across Europe could top $2.15 billion. That includes extra tourism revenue for Austria and Switzerland, multimillion-dollar TV licensing agreements, and increased food and beverage sales as fans head to bars or host barbecues in support of their home teams.
"Euro 2008 will have a halo effect on the wider European economy," says Chadwick. "This impact will be felt in many countries, principally driven by sponsorship and commercial revenues."
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jun2008/gb2008065_999043.htm
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
"Internet Explorer" sends "Firefox" a new cake for Firefox 3
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
Blogger arrests hit record high
More bloggers than ever face arrest for exposing human rights abuses or criticising governments, says a report.
Since 2003, 64 people have been arrested for publishing their views on a blog, says the University of Washington annual report.
In 2007 three times as many people were arrested for blogging about political issues than in 2006, it revealed.
More than half of all the arrests since 2003 have been made in China, Egypt and Iran, said the report.
Jail sentence
Citizens have faced arrest and jail for blogging about many different topics, said the World Information Access (WIA) report.
Arrested bloggers exposed corruption in government, abuse of human rights or suppression of protests. They criticised public policies and took political figures to task.
The report said the rising number of arrests was testament to the "growing" political importance of blogging. It noted that arrests tended to increase during times of "political uncertainty", such as around general elections or during large scale protests.
Jail time followed arrest for many bloggers, said the report, which found that the average prison sentence for blogging was 15 months. The longest sentence found by the WIA was eight years.
It acknowledged that the true number of bloggers arrested could be far higher than the total it found as, in some cases, it proved hard to verify if an arrest had taken place and on what grounds.
For instance, it said the Committee to Protect Bloggers has published information about 344 people arrested in Burma - many of whom are thought to be be bloggers - but the WIA could not verify all the reports.
It also noted that many nations, perhaps as many as 30, imposed technological restrictions on what people can do online. In nations such as China this made it difficult for people to use a blog as a means of protest.
The report pointed out that it is not just governments in the Middle East and East Asia that have taken steps against those publishing their opinions online. In the last four years, British, French, Canadian and American bloggers have also been arrested.
The report predicted that the number of blogger arrests in 2008 would exceed the 36 seen in 2007 thanks to greater popularity of blogging as a medium, greater enforcement of net restrictions, and elections in China, Pakistan, Iran and the US.
BBC News.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Children sent to a mental health clinic for addiction to mobile phones
The children, aged 12 and 13, were sent to the clinic by their parents, who said they could not carry out normal activities without their handsets.
They were doing badly at school and lying to relatives in order to get money to spend on their phones.
They have been learning to cope without their phones for three months.
Dr Maite Utges, who runs the Child and Youth Mental Health Centre in Lleida, near Barcelona in north-eastern Spain, said it was the first time the clinic had treated children who were dependent on their mobile phones.
"They both showed disturbed behaviour and this exhibited itself in failure at school. They both had serious difficulties leading normal lives," she was quoted in Spanish papers as saying.
The children had owned their phones for 18 months, and their parents had made little effort to restrict their use before noticing how serious their dependence had become.
'Tip of iceberg'
Dr Jose Martinez-Raga, an expert in addictions, said children who developed a dependency on mobile phones, like those who over-used video games, often became irritable, withdrawn and antisocial, and their school performance deteriorated.
He warned these cases could be the "tip of the iceberg", and that mobile phone addiction "could definitely be a danger in the future".
Fears have been raised in a number of countries about the adverse effects mobile phone use may have on children.
Dr Utges recommended that parents not allow their children to have mobile phones until they reached 16 years of age.
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