Category: Internet

AReview: KUSUR: The prisoner sentenced with capital punishment died mysteriously here in a District Jail on Sunday, Areview news reported. This is the second occurrence of enigmatic death in two days meanwhile, jail administration said prisoner, Aslam alias Sajid Raja was resident of Jhang district, claiming he died of cardiac arrest amid being transported to hospital. On the other hand, hospital sources said he had died before being shifted to hospital. It may be mentioned here that such an identical incident also occurred in same jail some days ago and there is no doctor for medical attainment of prisoners in jail.

Areview Forex: Forex simulator trading can be a great option to use when getting into the forex trading field. You can learn about the ins and outs of the forex market through this option. It…

KABUL: For the US Marines deployed to the battlefields of southern Afghanistan, life is fragile and thoughts focus on the day they see their families again, but something about this war is different. They are preparing for an offensive on Marjah, one of the Taliban’’s big urban strongholds in the southern province of Helmand, but progress is slow with the militants apparently preferring fight to flight. The Marines will soon be joined by tens of thousands more soldiers, the lion’’s share of the 30,000-strong troop surge promised by US President Barack Obama in December to try and turn around the grinding Afghan war. A foot patrol for one platoon of Marines ends with a dash under a hail of bullets across a heavily-mined poppy field. The soldiers have been pinned down in a muddy mound, the thorny weeds cutting through skin. They recover soon enough, however, manoeuvring away from the Taliban’’s crosshairs and driving them away with heavy machine-gun fire. “I pray in the morning and at night, hoping that someone up there is looking after me,” says Lance Corporal Justin Blancas, serving with the Marines 1st Battalion, 6th Regiment Alpha Company’’s 2nd Platoon. “I have already made my peace with God because this war is different, it’’s not conventional,” the 23-year-old bespectacled Chicago native says. “These Taliban have learned their lesson. They adapt as fast as we do, but we are bound by our strict rules. They are not,” he adds, panting after a 100-metre dash for cover behind an abandoned mud house. “It can be a death run like this every day.” The US and NATO troop surge is set to swell the foreign force to 150,000 this year, but Afghan and Western officials are also talking about a political solution to end the Taliban-led insurgency as its enters its ninth year. To force the Taliban leadership to the negotiating table however, US military officials have said there needs to be greater success on the battlefield — and this is where the Marines come in. But the challenges on the ground are immense. Fields are littered with improvised explosive devices (IEDs) responsible for most of the deaths of foreign troops in Afghanistan, which hit a record 520 fatalities last year. The Taliban are also entrenched in their strongholds holding sway over the population and setting up shadow governments across the country, meaning they have the local intelligence that the Marines desperately need. “Marjah has also been a stronghold by the Taliban for some time. They know where we are coming and can stage ambushes anytime,” says one sergeant who asks not to be named. Five Marines were killed in southern Afghanistan in two days of January alone in IED blasts and ambushes. Platoon commander Lieutenant David Emison, a Virginia native and the first Marine in his family, still sports a busted lip and chipped teeth sustained from a recent bomb blast that killed a sergeant. “They (the Taliban) make very powerful IEDs out here. If you step on them, you don”t get a second chance,” says Emison, the group’’s tactician, whose 25-year-old wife is pregnant with their second child back home. He says that after the incident, he has tried to become more careful about where he treads, but knows that a blast could take any of them anytime. The ex-college wrestler pushes away ugly thoughts and believes the unpopular war Obama inherited from the past administration will have a positive outcome. “It does not pay to be scared,” he says. Blancas, meanwhile, arms himself with his assault rifle, two rosaries and prayer cards stuffed in his pockets as the Marines prepare a full-on assault on Marjah in the coming weeks or months. Marjah has a population of at least 60,000. Built in the 1950s with US government help, it was intended to be a model agricultural town with an irrigation system flowing from the Helmand river. But instead of legitimate crops, poor farmers plant opium poppy, the trafficking and sale of which bankrolls the Taliban movement. The Marines” mission is to show US strength, assist in installing government control in Helmand province and let the local population know they have arrived. The challenge however is huge. Taliban militants harass the villagers at night, warning them of trouble if they help US troops. Under the cover of darkness, they also plant IEDs in fields the Marines have to cross. For father-of-one Blancas, it all comes down to one simple thing. “We do what we have to do, but I plan to be out of the corps soon and be daddy. I just have to stay alive till then.”

GAZA: Hamas officials as well as observers expected on Saturday that the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior Islamic Hamas movement commander in Dubai on Jan. 20, ” would sooner or later move the battle between Hamas and Israel outside the Palestinian territories.” They said the ambiguous assassination of al-Mabhouh might be “a new turn” in the military confrontation between Hamas and Israel, that could develop to mutual avenge attacks in some Arab and foreign countries. Hamas has directly accused the Israeli Mosad (foreign intelligence) of being behind his death. Observers close to Hamas said that the movement hasn”t yet expressed full commitment to a declared ceasefire with Israel after last winter’’s “Cast Lead” Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip, adding that al-Mabhouh’’s murder in Dubai “would oblige Hamas to respond to his killing.” Mustafa al-Sawaf, a Gaza-based political analyst, specialized in Hamas affairs expected that “Hamas response to the killing of al-Mabhouh, who has a high-ranking position in Hamas armed wing, would be equal to an assassination of a senior Israeli leader.” “Although Hamas response to the killing of al-Mabhouh would be linked to certain political and military considerations in the field, but I still believe that the movement would keep the demand of revenge in order to re-account itself among its supporters,” said al-Sawaf. He added that the assassination’’s circumstances and the place where it occurred “would be a justification to open a new field of confrontation and adopt a new strategy of attacking Israeli targets abroad, which will be contrary to its strategy that focuses on fighting Israel in the Palestinian territories.” Al-Sawaf explained that this shows Israel is able to infiltrate the security of the Arab countries by targeting Hamas leaders who live abroad. “Israel sends a message to Hamas that it can carry out more assassinations abroad against Hamas prisoners who will be released after the prisoners swap is finalized.” Hamas has deliberately calmed down the confrontation with Israel by stopping homemade rocket attacks from Gaza at southern Israel after the end of January 2009 Israeli war on Gaza, which has left more than 1,440 people killed and 5,000 wounded.

MOSCOW: Libya has signed an arms deal with Russia worth 1.3 billion euros ($1.8 billion), Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was quoted as saying on Saturday. “Only yesterday we signed a contract worth 1.3 billion euros,” Putin said, according to media. “And it’’s not only small arms,” he added, without specifying which weapons Libya intended to purchase. An official news agency quoted a military-diplomatic source as saying Libya was prepared to buy around 20 fighter planes and S-300PMU2 air defense systems. The agency said on Tuesday that Libya also may acquire T-90S tanks, and modernize more than 140 T-72 tanks and other weapons. The deal was signed after talks with Libyan defense minister, Major General Abu-Bakr Yunis Jabr, earlier this week in Moscow.

Tanpa terasa dua belas hari lagi halaman tanya jawab akan genap berusia 3 tahun terhitung sejak 10 Pebruari 2007. Pada bulan September 2009 yang lalu saya mencoba membuat review terkait interaksi dengan pembaca melalui halaman tanya jawab maupun berdasarkan posting. Saya menyadari banyak jawaban yang tidak memuaskan pembaca karena keterbatasan saya. Disamping itu, tuntutan sebagian penanya untuk mendiagnosa keluhan hanya berdasarkan diskripsi singkat dan minimnya informasi penunjang, tidaklah mudah untuk memberikan jawaban yang memuaskan. Ini bisa dimaklumi lantaran ketidaktahuan sebagian pembaca bahwa mendiagnosa penyakit tidak cukup hanya dengan menyampaikan keluhan, atau hanya menunjukkan hasil Lab tanpa pemeriksaan fisik.

Adakah contoh interaksi yang baik ? Ada ! Tak ada salahnya kita mencontoh konsultasi online dari negara lain yang sudah mapan sehingga setidaknya kita dapat meminimalisir kendala teknis yang membedakan antara konsultasi online dengan konsultasi di ruang praktek.

Berikut ini saya salinkan salah satu contoh Konsultasi Online di situs just answer yang digawangi oleh 4 dokter umum dan 2 orang dokter spesialis.

Seorang wanita berusia 33 tahun konsultasi online dengan interaksi sebagai berikut:

Question
Hi I have uncovered a red patch on my back of 3cm two days ago, with multiple vesiculas, at least 15 heads, the patch is red. It was swollen it is now flat, it is not tender, more itchy; mildly painful if i apply alcohol. Other things/ I am 25 weeks pregnant, and I can send you a photo I have taken 2 courses of antibiotics in the past 3 weeks due to bronchitis I am back from a trip to south africA

Optional Information:
Gender: f. Age: 33

Already Tried: I have appplied alocohol

Sesaat kemudian muncul jawaban dokter:

Hi, Send a "clear" photo.

Si penanya pun mengirimkan Selanjutnya terjadilah dialog interaktif online antara wanita penanya dan dokter.

:: :: :: posting menggunakan WLW :: :: ::

Filed under: Artikel, Blog, Gaya Hidup, Health, Informasi, Kedokteran, Kesehatan, Opini Tagged: Internet, Kesehatan, Konsultasi online, Obat, Penyakit

Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

The demise of San Diego’s Verari Systems and its resurrection as Verari Technologies happened so fast you might not have realized what happened unless you were paying close attention over the holidays.

The longtime local company, which specializes in making high-performance servers, server racks, and energy-efficient data storage centers, laid off 223 employees and ceased operations just two weeks before Christmas. It was hard to make out what was happening at the time, chiefly because Verari denied media reports that it had shut down—saying instead that its doors were open and it was merely “restructuring” its business.

But a few weeks later, a notice on Verari’s website said the high-performance computer company was in fact soliciting buyers in a public auction. All Verari assets were later sold through a liquidation known as an “assignment for the benefit of creditors.” Such liquidations, sometimes known as “friendly foreclosures,” are not that unusual—especially these days, according to Bruce Bennett, a Los Angeles bankruptcy lawyer. Bennett told me that in these scenarios, a senior secured creditor, usually a bank that provided a business loan, forces the issue, but ultimately with the company’s cooperation. “It’s just an inherently simpler and less expensive way of liquidating the assets instead of going through bankruptcy,” Bennett says. In most cases, no new company emerges from such liquidations.

But Bennett says it’s not that unusual for a key figure from a distressed company to step back in and acquire all the assets—which is what happened at Verari. Dave Driggers, who founded the San Diego company in 1991 and was working as Verari’s chief technology officer, led an investment group that bought all of the old Verari’s assets. Driggers also stepped in as CEO to reboot the San Diego computer company, which is now known as Verari Technologies. Less than 40 percent of the old Verari’s 223 employees are expected to get their jobs back.

Dave Driggers

Verari reopened for business last week, capping a lightning-fast salvage that took less than six weeks to carry out. But it tortures common sense to describe what happened as a restructuring.

In a recent interview, Driggers told me that all of Verari’s previous investors were wiped out—after raising $59 million in three rounds—and that they were not part of the group that bought Verari’s assets. “You never heard me announce a restructuring,” Driggers said. “I chose not to say anything during the process—from the day we shut down until after the acquisition.”

During our conversation, Driggers explained why he’s optimistic about the future of Verari Technologies—which he says is moving forward with the same technology and a better business model. He also explained why the old Verari failed.

With a mixture of exasperation and pride, Driggers said that Verari “had incurred a huge amount of debt” while its technology and products were …Next Page »

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graphic: M3Li55@ via Flickr

It’s said that politics creates strange bedfellows. I was reminded how true this can be when I traveled to D.C. in recent weeks to figure out why several advocacy groups and legislators with histories of advocating for minority interests are lining up with big telecom companies in opposition to the FCC’s efforts to pass “Net Neutrality” rules.

Net Neutrality is the principle that prevents Internet Service Providers from controlling what kind of content or applications you can access online. It sounds wonky, but for Black and other communities, an open Internet offers a transformative opportunity to truly control our own voice and image, while reaching the largest number of people possible. This dynamic is one major reason why Barack Obama was elected president and why organizations like ColorOfChange.org exist.

So, I was troubled to learn that several Congressional Black Caucus members were among 72 Democrats to write the FCC last fall questioning the need for Net Neutrality rules. I was further troubled that a number of our nation’s leading civil rights groups had also taken positions questioning or against Net Neutrality, using arguments that were in step with those of the big phone and cable companies like AT&T and Comcast, which are determined to water down any new FCC rules.

Most unsettling about their position is the argument that maintaining Net Neutrality could widen the digital divide.

First, let’s be clear: the problem of the broadband digital divide is real. Already, getting a job, accessing services, managing one’s medical care—just to mention a few examples—are all facilitated online. Those who aren’t connected face a huge disadvantage in so many aspects of our society. Broadband access is a big problem — but that doesn’t mean it has anything to do with Net Neutrality.

Yet some in the civil rights community will tell you differently. They claim that if broadband providers can earn greater profits by charging content providers for access to the Internet “fast lane,” then they will lower prices to underserved areas. In other words, if Comcast — which already earns 80 percent profit margins on its broadband services — can increase its profits under a system without Net Neutrality, then they’ll all of a sudden invest in our communities. You don’t have to be a historian or economist to know that this type of trickle-down economics never works and has always failed communities of color.

Whether the phone and cable companies can make more money by acting as toll-takers on the Internet has nothing to do with whether they will invest in increased deployment of broadband. If these companies think investing in low-income communities makes good business sense, they will make the investment. Benevolence doesn’t factor into the equation.

On my trips to Washington, I met with some of the groups and congressional offices questioning or opposing Net Neutrality. I asked them what evidence they had to back up claims that undermining Net Neutrality would lead to an expansion of broadband to under-served communities, or that preserving Net Neutrality would thwart expansion. Not one could answer my question. Some CBC members hadn’t yet been presented with a counter to the industry’s arguments; others told stories about pressure from telecom companies or from other members of congress. As one CBC staffer told me, many CBC members have willingly supported the business agenda of telecom companies because the industry can be counted on to make campaign contributions, and they face no political backlash.

(more…)

The SMH has a report on a protest against internet censorship by the Australian government – Websites fade to black in censorship protest.

Hundreds of websites joined an Australia Day “internet blackout” today to protest against the Government’s web censorship agenda, but even the internet industry body believes it will do little to lessen the Government’s resolve.

The Greens, Democrats and ISP iiNet are among the organisations that pledged to fade their websites to black today and provide visitors with information about the Government’s censorship plans. The blackout is expected to last until Friday.

The Government is determined to implement mandatory internet filtering of a secret blacklist of sites the Government’s censors have determined are “refused classification” (RC).

Critics say RC is too broad and that providing the Government with a new censorship power is unnecessary, given that the filters could only ever cover a tiny fraction of the nasty websites on the internet. Child welfare groups have said it might give parents a false sense of security.

There are also fears over the lack of transparency in administering the blacklist and that the scope of what is blocked could drastically increase over time.

“My main problem with the filter proposal is that it won’t work and that it sets up a really dangerous mechanism to centralise censorship of the net by the Australian Government,” Greens communications spokesman Scott Ludlam said.

AReview: SARGODHA: At least 3 persons died including 2 children during road accident here on Thursday morning, Areview news reported. The rescue efforts have been kicked off according to preliminary reports.

AReview: SWAT/MANSEHRA: By-elections in constituency NA-21 Mansehra 2, and constituency of Provincial Assembly PF-83 Swat 4 have kicked off here at 8:00 am on Thursday morning, Areview news reported. Swat constituency has declared sensitive while the extraordinary security measures have been adopted for the purpose. According to details Election Commission had finalized the arrangements for the by-elections on Wednesday. In constituency NA-21 Mansehra Tahir Ali candidate of Muslim League- Nawaz (PML-N), Salahauddin of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Zargul of Pakistan Muslim League-Q are running for victory. In constituency PF-83 Swat 4 Rehmat Ali Khan (ANP), Jurat Khan (PML-Q), Hussain Kanju from Jamaat Islami, Sher Muhammad Khan Tehreek-e-Insaaf and independent candidate Muhammad Khan are in run. The number of registered voters in the constituency is 114,658 including 69223 male and 43435 females. Eighty polling stations have been set up in the constituency and security has been tightened.

I have no earthly idea why I would ever possibly need five 32 inch flat screen TVs but after cruising Liquidation.com, I am tempted to start bidding. Think of the Liquidation.com as a sort of bulk eBay. Instead of one TV to bid on, at this auction site, most likely they could be sold in sets of five. There might be bulk lots of various sporting equipment, toys or clothes. Liquidation.com is a company that buys up the merchandise that national retailers don’t need. The Christmas gifts you didn’t want and returned might end up on Liquidation.com. So would surplus items that stores can’t sell. The company won’t name the stores it buys from, but claims it does business with all the biggies. If you win an auction, you can have the stuff shipped to you or you can pick it up from one of the company’s six warehouses. We’re live from the facility in Garland.

So how does all this translate into extra dollars in a tough economy? We talked with some of Liquidation.com’s customers. Some are small business owners who buy items at a discount to then resell in their store. Others are individuals who only have a storefront in cyberspace. They may buy those five TVs for example, and then sell them individually on websites like eBay and Craigslist. How good are the deals? We talked with one man who bought four pieces of office furniture for $200. James Kelly needs only one  or two of the pieces, which he says would have sold retail for what he paid for all four. The other furniture Kelly doesn’t use, he will resell to cover the cost of entire purchase and maybe even make a buck or two.

We also talked with a woman whose name is Maria. She didn’t want us to use her last name. Maria lost her job about six months ago and turned to Liquidation.com because she says she needs some way to make money while she’s looking for a job. When we met Maria, she was picking up about four iPod docking stations and a couple of boxes of other audio equipment. She paid $300 for the lot of it. Maria was hoping at least to make a couple hundred dollars. She says now, anything would help.

Apparently, Kelly and Maria are not alone. Rob Caskey with Liquidation.com says while the company seems to do well in any economy,  during the past holiday season, auctions were up 20%.

Wade Roush wrote:

The first thing you should know about Carbonite, the Boston-based online backup company, is that it is indeed named after the ice-like substance in which Darth Vader encased Han Solo at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. David Friend, Carbonite’s co-founder and CEO, even has a replica of the frozen Solo in his office.

But if you ask him whether there’s an intentional resonance between the idea of preserving your data online and being frozen in carbonite, the answer is not really. “That’s an added benny of the name, but my first criteria for a name are that if you say it you should be able to spell it, and the URL should be available,” Friend says. “If it means something cool that’s relevant to your product, so much the better.”

In other words, Friend is a certified nerd, but with a hard-edged, practical bent. And that’s more or less how Carbonite spins its service, too. Most PC users don’t back up their data at all, let alone on the Internet, so cloud-based storage of the type Carbonite offers is still an exotic, high-tech idea for many people. Yet Carbonite spends most of its advertising dollars buying spots on populist radio and TV talk shows hosted by the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Rachel Maddow.

Its pitch is simple, playing to the same widely held fears about data loss or malware attacks that drive many consumers to buy anti-virus software from McAfee or Symantec. Even Carbonite’s pricing and service model—$55 per year for unlimited Internet-based backup, period—is meant to save customers from having to fuss over the details. (The company was the first to offer flat rate, all-you-can eat backup, and takes credit for converting most other backup providers, including archrival Mozy, to this model.)

Carbonite, in other words, is a smart company with some very sophisticated technology in the back room—but it’s even more focused on the challenges of marketing that technology to a non-tech-savvy public.

Next week I plan to compare Carbonite’s backup service to Mozy, its main competition, in a detailed review. But today I want to focus more on Carbonite’s business strategy, drawing on a January 13 interview with Friend at the company’s 14th-floor offices at 177 Huntington Avenue, in the Christian Science complex. The most important takeaway from the interview was that the serial entrepreneur, who has co-founded five previous technology companies, from music-synthesizer maker ARP Instruments to Web conferencing startup Sonexis, has big plans for his sixth. If all goes according to plan, he says, Carbonite will register for an initial public offering this year and go public sometime in 2011.

That’s not because it needs the money to keep growing—revenue has doubled every year since the company launched its service in 2006, and the company still has $15 million of the $20 million Series C money it raised in late 2008 in the bank. (That’s not even counting the additional $20 million in Series D funding that it raised earlier this month.) Rather, it’s because Friend sees Carbonite as the next Boston-area tech-and-marketing company that could go really big—the next VistaPrint (NASDAQ: VPRT) or Constant Contact (NASDAQ: CTCT).

And he’s not daunted by the downsides of life in a public company: the investor scrutiny, the endless Sarbanes-Oxley compliance requirements. “It’s expensive and it’s personally risky” to go public, Friend acknowledges. “But what you get for it is access to capital at a rate that is far better than what you would get in the private markets. I’m looking forward to spending a few years running a public company—I love talking, I love road shows, I would love to get out there and pitch Carbonite to the investor community.”

Becoming a publicly traded company is also an important “branding event” for a small firm, Friend notes: “A quarter of the antivirus products on the market are actually viruses, but when you install antivirus on your PC from a McAfee or a Symantec, you don’t worry about that, because their reputation precedes them; they are public companies.”

If Carbonite isn’t yet a household name like those firms, it’s because the world is just now beginning to catch up with the company’s original idea of simple, flat-rate, unlimited backup. There were already a few online backup vendors when …Next Page »

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EBay needs more people to buy and sell stuff on its site, so it will change its listing fees at the end of March, says Reuters. Once it goes into effect, auction items with a starting price of 99 cents can be listed for free, and eBay will take 9% of the final price or $50, whichever is less.

Frequent sellers will be able to buy into a subscription plan that should reduce their listing fees as well.

That’s all great news for sellers, I guess (I haven’t used eBay in a pretty long time). But will it entice more buyers to come back to the auction site?

“EBay to stop, change listing fees for some sellers”