martedì 16 settembre 2008

Inflation surges above forecasts to 4.7 per cent

 From
September 16, 2008

Inflation surged above forecasts to 4.7 per cent in August to the highest rate since Britain's last recession, after the price of food and energy rose.

Today's figures forced Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, to write his third letter in 18 months to Chancellor Alistair Darling to explain why inflation remains so far above the Government's 2 per cent target.

He is required to write such a letter when inflation rises by 1 percentage point above the target and every three months thereafter until it falls below the 3 per cent threshold.

In his letter, Mr King said he expected inflation to remain above target well into 2009, and said he expected to write more letters to the Chancellor.

 Analysts had forecast the CPI measure of inflation would rise from 4.4 per cent to 4.6 per cent. Inflation is now at the highest level since April 1992 when Britain was in the grip of a full-blown slowdown.

Inflation was pushed higher by spiralling energy bills, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Households are now paying 27.7 per cent more on their gas bills and 18 per cent more for electricity.

The price of food and non-alcoholic drinks also rose by 1.3 per cent last month and, in the year to August, by 13 per cent.

However, the ONS said this rise was partly offset by the falling cost of petrol and diesel, which fell by 4.6 per cent during the month.

The cost of banking services also increased as lenders cut their mortgage arrangement fees by less than they did last year.

These fees have grown sharply over the past five years, with arrangement fees of more than £1,000 becoming commonplace. Personal care items, such as hair dryers, also rose in cost, helping to push inflation higher.

Today's gloomy figures dented hopes of an imminent rate cut as the Bank of England is unlikely to adjust rates until it sees evidence that inflation is falling.

The Bank will be particularly concerned by the rise in core inflation, which excludes volatile energy and food prices and could indicate that higher energy and fuel costs are being passed on by producers and becoming embedded in the economy.

Core inflation rose to 2 per cent, from 1.9 per cent in July, equalling the highest rate in 10 years.

Howard Archer, chief UK and European economist at Global Insight, said: "The continuing upward trend maintains concern that higher energy and food prices are having second-round inflationary effects."

However, the RPI measure of inflation, which includes housing costs, fell slightly from 5 per cent in July to 4.8 per cent in August. 

martedì 9 settembre 2008

Google to put newspaper archives online

From
September 9, 2008
Google logo

(The Times)

Google is planning to put the world’s newspapers online

Google has taken another step towards its stated goal of indexing the world’s information by scanning newspaper archives and making them searchable on the internet.

The company that leads the way in cataloguing online information has been stepping up efforts to digitise material created before the advent of the internet. Google Books has been gradually scanning millions of books from publishers and libraries, making the text as easily searchable as that of a website.

The newspaper-scanning project announced today will begin with a handful of North American newspapers, including the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph, considered to be the continent’s oldest newspaper.

Large newspapers including The Times and The New York Times have already digitised their archives and opened them to readers, but smaller publications do not have the resources to embark on the labour-intensive process of scanning thousands of editions.

Google’s intention is that billions of articles from the past 250 years will eventually be brought online.

“We’ll be bringing online generations of writers,” Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products told the TechCrunch 50 conference in San Francisco. “We’re adding newspapers to the broader sweep of offline material we’re bringing online.”

Google will pay for the cost of scanning the archives of any newspaper publisher willing to allow the stories to be shown free on Google's website. Participating publishers will receive an unspecified portion of the revenue generated from advertising displayed next to the stories.

“I believe this could be a turning point for the industry,” said Pierre Little, publisher of the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph, which has an archive dating back to 1764. “This helps us unlock a bit of an asset that had just been sitting within the organisation."

Google declined to specify how many other papers have signed up or how much the company has budgeted for the project.

The archive articles will be shown in the same format as they originally appeared, allowing readers to zoom into stories and browse through the rest of the edition.

Finding the old newspaper stories initially will require readers to use Google’s news search pages, but archive newspaper stories should start showing up on Google's main results page within a year, Google said.

sabato 6 settembre 2008

US election neck and neck after the ‘Sarah Palin bounce’

John McCain headed into the last 60 days of the US presidential campaign neck and neck with Barack Obama after a “Sarah Palin bounce” appeared to have all but cancelled out the Democrat’s lead in the polls.

With the Republican Party finishing its convention in St Paul believing that victory on November 4 is truly within its grasp, the Rasmussen tracking poll yesterday had Mr Obama on 46 per cent and Mr McCain on 45 per cent.

Mr Obama headed to the battleground state of Pennsylvania last night knowing that he has a titanic fight on his hands to realise his dream of becoming America’s first black president. His aides have said for months that the race for the White House will be close, but Republicans left their Minnesota convention knowing that the contest is now really up for grabs.

The Rasmussen poll, a three-day rolling average, was taken before Mr McCain addressed his party — and many interviews were conducted even before Mrs Palin’s barnstorming performance as “a pitbull with lipstick”, suggesting that there may be further Republican gains in the next few days.

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venerdì 5 settembre 2008

Google Android

 

Stand up and fight, John McCain tells Republicans

Comment: Gerard Baker McCain speech in full |Sketch: Brady Bunch on steroids | Ferraro criticises 'sexist' media | Punters fail to take to Palin

John McCain last night sought to drag the Republican party back on course for a third successive presidential victory by re-casting it in his own self-image of a maverick reformer ready to reach out across political divisions and end "partisan rancour".

His speech accepting the presidential nomination capped a week in which the stellar power of his running mate Sarah Palin and the soap opera surrounding her family have overshadowed not only him but also — for the first time in months — his Democratic opponent Barack Obama.

And last night Mr McCain's promise to put country ahead of party interest seemed thin fare for the sometimes subdued delegates who had feasted on the raw red meat served up by the ferocious Mrs Palin at the convention 24 hours before.

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giovedì 4 settembre 2008

Control of Anbar province handed over to Iraqi forces

US forces ceremonially handed control of Anbar province, scene of the bloodiest battles of the insurgency, to their Iraqi counterparts today, underlining the massive improvement achieved in security in recent months.

Anbar, the first Sunni province to be returned to Iraqi rule, witnessed some of the fiercest fighting since the US-led invasion in 2003, notably during the two sieges of Fallujah in 2004 and 2005. Around a third of the 1,305 Americans troops who lost their lives in Iraq have died in Anbar.

After the invasion, Fallujah and Ramadi, the provincial capital, quickly fell into the hands of Sunni groups allied to al-Qaeda. For years residents lived amid brutal street battles between American troops and the insurgents.

President Bush hailed today’s ceremony in Ramadi as a victory against al-Qaeda. “Today, Anbar is no longer lost to al Qaeda- it is al-Qaeda that lost Anbar,” he said.

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mercoledì 3 settembre 2008

Pakistan PM Yousuf Gillani escapes assassination attempt

Yousuf Raza Gillani, the Pakistani Prime Minister, escaped an assassination attempt today when shots were fired at his motorcade.

Mr Gillani was returning to the capital, Islamabad, after a flight from the eastern city of Lahore when two bullets hit the glass of the armouned car in which he was travelling. "By the grace of Allah, the Prime Minister is safe," his spokesman said.

Mr Gillani is a senior member of the Pakistan People's Party, which was led by Benazir Bhutto until her assassination on December 27 as she left an election rally in Rawalpindi. The PPP went on to win the election on February 18 and Mr Gillani was sworn in as premier the following month.

Earlier today, foreign commandos from Afghanistan backed by helicopter gunships carried out a pre-dawn attack inside Pakistan today, killing 20 people, including women and children, and provoking outrage.

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martedì 2 settembre 2008

65 MOTIVI PER NON COMPRARE IPHONE METICOLOSAMENTE DIVISI PER SETTORI!!!

MESSAGGISTICA
- Non manda, né riceve, gli MMS
- Non ha un contatore caratteri per i SMS
- Non è possibile inoltrare gli SMS
- Non è possibile mandare più di 1 SMS alla volta
- Non è possibile cancellare il singolo SMS, ma solo tutti quelli riferiti ad un contatto
- Non è possibile disabilitare la modalità predittiva del testo (cerca di anticipare le parole che vuoi scrivere)
- Non ha il T9, bisogna premere una lettera per volta
- Non è possibile usarlo in landscape quando in modalità SMS (la tastiera risulta scomoda)
- Non è possibile fare il copia/incolla di testo
- Non si possono premere i tasti senza guardarlo, e i guanti ne inibiscono l'uso
- Non si ha alcun feedback tattile per i tasti premuti

CLIENT EMAIL
- Non è possibile caricare allegati alle email, tranne -1- foto, e con la limitazione che sia massimo 800x600
- Non supporta funzionalità avanzate di email come "leggi tutto", "cerca", "ordina"
- Il push-mail è supportato unicamente con Yahoo (niente GMAIL)

MULTIMEDIA
- Non ha la Radio FM
- Non si possono registrare appunti vocali
- L'altoparlante del vivavoce è solo 1 (monofonia)
- Non è possibile usare file MP3 come suonerie, bisogna prima riconvertirli
- Non supporta file video in formato AVI, WMV, DIVX, RM, 3GP
- Non supporta file audio in formato WMA, OGG Vorbis, AMR, MIDI, FLAC
- La libreria musicale iPod è sprovvista dell'opzione "cerca"
- Non è possibile controllare la riproduzione musicale se non dall'applicazione stessa

CAMERA
- Non è possibile registrare video
- La fotocamera è di bassa qualità, con soli 2MP (* vedere sotto)
- Non c'è un faretto LED, utile per fotocamera, e come torcia luminosa
- Non c'è un tasto dedicato per la fotocamera
- La fotocamera è sprovvista di alcuna funzionalità avanzata, come AutoFocus, White Balance, Face Recognition, Zoom
- La lente della fotocamera non è protetta da un copri-obiettivo, esponendola a sporco, graffi, umidità

STORAGE
- Non è possibile usarlo come unità disco
- Bisogna sempre passare da iTunes per qualsiasi operazione: caricare musica e video, installare i programmi, sincronizzare la rubrica
- Non ha un file browser per navigare il suo contenuto
- La memoria non è espandibile

INTERNET BROWSER
- Non supporta Adobe Flash Player (es. Youtube, Google Video, Giochi)
- Non supporta JAVA, ovvero Javascript, applicativi J2ME
- Non supporta gli archivi, quindi .ZIP, .RAR
- Non è possibile aprire un link internet in un nuovo TAB

TELEFONIA
- Non si possono registrare le chiamate
- Non ha i comandi vocali, utili dal momento in cui manca risposta tattile dai tasti, e quando si hanno le mani occupate
- Non ha la chiamata veloce (1 tasto) ai contatti in rubrica ("1" per segreteria, "2" per casa, "3" per il primo contatto di rubrica, etc)
- Non salva la durata dell'ultima chiamata
- Non è possibile usarlo per fare videochiamate, mancando la fotocamera frontale

CONNETTIVITA'
- Non è possibile usarlo come MODEM UMTS (es. tethering), Apple lo ha esplicitamente vietato
- Non supporta pienamente il bluetooth: niente A2DP, niente scambio file, niente sincronizzazione con il PC, si può usare solo per gli auricolari
- Non è possibile cambiare gli APN di default per Vodafone (es. WAP)
- Il chipset 3G fornisce prestazioni altalenanti, spesso mediocri e con saltuarie disconnessioni
- Per sincronizzarlo con altri dispositivi bisogna comprare un abbonamento MobileMe (la cui stessa Apple ha definito buggato) da 79 euro l'anno

SOFTWARE
- Tutti i programmi installabili sono supervisionati da Apple, ovvero sottostanno a rigide regole, e gli sviluppatori devono pagare alcune tasse
- Apple può controllarlo da remoto, eventualmente disinstallando le applicazioni secondo proprio giudizio
- Il multitasking è molto limitato, praticamente assente sulle applicazioni terze
- Non ha la possibilità di impostare allarmi ripetuti per gli appuntamenti, oppure mettere temporaneamente in pausa un allarme in corso
- Non ha la possibilità di fare da sveglia anche da spento
- Non esistono programmi di navigazione GPS (es. TomTom, Garmin), c'è solo Google Maps, che richiede una connessione dati sempre attiva
- Non esiste un programma di Apple per l'Istant Messanging (AIM, AOL, MSN)
- Non esiste un programma di Apple per il VoIP (SIP, Skype)
- Non è possibile aprire documenti office / pdf , a meno che non siano in allegato alle email
- Non è possibile editare documenti office / pdf

ESTERNO
- Costa circa 500 euro, al netto di eventuali (costosi) piani tariffari
- La batteria (di durata non eccelsa) non è sostituibile autonomamente, bisogna rivolgersi all'assistenza Apple (70 euro)
- Dimensioni generose: 115 x 62 x 12 mm ; così come il peso: 135 grammi
- Essendone costretti all'uso con le dita, lo schermo è perennemente ricoperto dalle nostre impronte di grasso
- Non ha un punto di appoggio sul piano, oscillando a destra e sinistra
- Per ricaricarlo da spento è necessario prima accenderlo, poi rispegnerlo
- La CPU utilizzata non funziona a piena velocità, ma è underclockata a 412MHz

FUORI CLASSIFICA
- E' Apple
- Assomiglia ad una padella
- Viene difeso strenuamente da tutti gli applisti


(*) Confronto della qualità della fotocamera
- 2MP (iPhone / iPhone 3G) : http://www.gsmarena.com/showpic.php3...marena_009.jpg
- 5MP (Samsung Omnia i900) : http://www.gsmarena.com/showpic.php3...marena_011.jpg
- 8MP (Samsung INNOV8 i8510) : http://www.gsmarena.com/showpic.php3...marena_010.jpg
- L'una di fianco all'altra (con CROP) : http://i.gsmarena.com/vv/reviewsimg/...marena_012.jpg


Recensioni assolutamente non di parte ( ) :
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone
http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/SoleO...lesView=Libero

fonte: MIKELEZZ PRODUCTIONS

Geek 1.0 vs Geek 2.0

Hurricane evacuees return home as Gustav fades to storm

James Bone in Lafayette, Louisiana

The first of two million evacuees have begun picking their way through felled trees and downed power-lines to return home in the wake of Hurricane Gustav, which was blamed for at least eight deaths after crashing into America's Gulf coast.

Restless evacuees set off after darkness despite a dawn-to-dusk curfew in New Orleans and across most of the Louisiana coastline, taking the risk of being turned back at police barricades.

Maureen Rogers and her husband Claude left the electricity-less hotel where they spent the storm in the inland town of Lafayette to try to drive home to their home in Lydia, about 25 miles away towards the coast.

"We have had a lot of hurricanes we have gone through. You have got to pack up and leave. Then you go home and have got to unpack and you have work for days ahead of you," Mrs Rogers said.

"My niece's husband is a line-man for the power company. He checked it out and it was okay. We do not have electricity, but everything else is alright," she said. "I just have my neighbour's trampoline on top of my shed. All the skirting of my mobile home is blown out."

At least eight deaths were attributed to the hurricane, including a family of four who died in a car crash as they evacuated to Georgia and an elderly couple who were killed when a tree fell on their daughter's house in Baton Rouge, where they had taken refuge.

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