Susan Boyle's increasingly strange behaviour is a result of the enormous pressure she's facing after becoming an international sensation, says psychologist.
While writing in The Mirror, behavioural psychologist Jo Hemmings said that Boyle has been living her life in an absolutely different world than she's used to, making it difficult for her to cope.
And it's worse for someone like Boyle who has psychological problems, he adds.
She's freaking out because she doesn't know how to act in situation.
Hemmings claims that 'Britain's Got Talent' will have a lasting impact on Boyle.
The recent outburst when judge Piers Morgan said Shaheen Jafargholi was in with a chance of winning was the outcome of the feeling of betrayal, because Piers was such a great fan of hers.
She's trying to act how she thinks she should act in that scenario. It looks awkward and uncomfortable and doesn't come naturally to her.
Hemmings said that winning will be the best option but her outbursts will affect her chances because we're looking at her with less affection now.
He said she never expected to win when she first entered but has an artificial selfbelief that has been put on her by other people.
She's now convinced she'll win - and that's part of her problem, Hemmings added.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Teen movies have fewer swear words now
WASHINGTON - Movies targeting teenagers were often full of violence but a welcome development is that they no longer bristle with as many swear words as they did 25 years ago, a new study says.
Communications professors of the Brigham Young University analysed 90 top-grossing movies from 1980 to 2006 for swear words and bad language, including those with sexual and excretory overtones. They found that current movies have only half the profane language.
“We were quite surprised at the findings,” study co-author Mark Callister said.
“When you consider that profanity is increasing on television, especially during the 9 to 10 p.m. hour, and in music lyrics, you often expect to find similar trends in other media,” he added.
They selected this genre of movies, based on whether the story line centred on teens and the film featured performers aged between 12 and 17 years and teens in major and minor roles. Only G-, PG- and PG-13-rated films were included because teens aren’t supposed to see R-rated movies without a parent or guardian.
The three researchers found 2,311 instances of swearing in the 90 films they surveyed.
The eighties movies, including “Back to the Future”, “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” and “Karate Kid” averaged 35 instances of profanity per film, while that figure dropped to 25 profanities in the 1990s in movies like “Clueless”, “The Brady Bunch Movie” and “Little Big League”, and dropped again to 16 instances per show in the 2000s in movies including “Spider Man”, “Harry Potter” and “Remember the Titans”.
Commonly swear words are classified as mild words, including “damn” and “hell”, and they constitute 57 percent of the bad words, said a university release.
Researchers were concerned over how young minds are impressionable and how Hollywood movies deeply impact American culture.
“Teens have access to movies like never before through TV, DVDs, the Internet and pay-per-view,” the study said.
Communications professors of the Brigham Young University analysed 90 top-grossing movies from 1980 to 2006 for swear words and bad language, including those with sexual and excretory overtones. They found that current movies have only half the profane language.
“We were quite surprised at the findings,” study co-author Mark Callister said.
“When you consider that profanity is increasing on television, especially during the 9 to 10 p.m. hour, and in music lyrics, you often expect to find similar trends in other media,” he added.
They selected this genre of movies, based on whether the story line centred on teens and the film featured performers aged between 12 and 17 years and teens in major and minor roles. Only G-, PG- and PG-13-rated films were included because teens aren’t supposed to see R-rated movies without a parent or guardian.
The three researchers found 2,311 instances of swearing in the 90 films they surveyed.
The eighties movies, including “Back to the Future”, “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” and “Karate Kid” averaged 35 instances of profanity per film, while that figure dropped to 25 profanities in the 1990s in movies like “Clueless”, “The Brady Bunch Movie” and “Little Big League”, and dropped again to 16 instances per show in the 2000s in movies including “Spider Man”, “Harry Potter” and “Remember the Titans”.
Commonly swear words are classified as mild words, including “damn” and “hell”, and they constitute 57 percent of the bad words, said a university release.
Researchers were concerned over how young minds are impressionable and how Hollywood movies deeply impact American culture.
“Teens have access to movies like never before through TV, DVDs, the Internet and pay-per-view,” the study said.
13 things we already know about GTA IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony
Damn, Rockstar is full of surprises. Who could have guessed that the developer’s franchise - built on gritty crime, bloody violence, hardened characters and grossly exaggerated stereotypes - would debut an entry with words like “ballad” and “gay” right in the title? When the first downloadable content starred leather-clad biker gangs listening to classic rock, who could foresee a second expansion’s logo with rainbow lettering and disco ball sparkles?
Actually… everyone. If you were paying close enough attention during the events of GTA IV and The Lost and Damned, as a matter of fact, you could predict a huge portion of The Ballad of Gay Tony, including everything from heroes and villains to locations and specific missions.
Skeptical? Here are 13 things we already know.
Click on to get your mid blown away.
*Note: I went into this skeptical. When I came out, I was thunderstruck!*
Actually… everyone. If you were paying close enough attention during the events of GTA IV and The Lost and Damned, as a matter of fact, you could predict a huge portion of The Ballad of Gay Tony, including everything from heroes and villains to locations and specific missions.
Skeptical? Here are 13 things we already know.
Click on to get your mid blown away.
*Note: I went into this skeptical. When I came out, I was thunderstruck!*
France to ban Scientology?
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8...
A celebrity favorite, with 8 million members, this pyramid scheme posing as a religion, created by the science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, is within one court decision of being banned from practice in France. The charges are fraud, and if convicted, the "religion" would join Satanism is France's second banned "religion"
What do you think? A good use of state power? Or would this take things too far? Should people be allowed to be use their money however they please (in this case to "practice" a religion?
What do you think? A good use of state power? Or would this take things too far? Should people be allowed to be use their money however they please (in this case to "practice" a religion?
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Seven things to mull when choosing data deduplication tools
Deduplication technology is just what is needed as IT budgets are tightened while mission critical data continues to grow. Find out how you can pick the right solution.
When the investment banking system in the United States experienced a financial crisis, it caused a ripple effect beyond North America and spread to Europe and Asia.
Companies in all industries are experiencing lower revenues and are deploying strict expense controls. Every IT department in the world is feeling the pressure of our current economy.
The mandate now and for the foreseeable future is to reduce capital expenditures, lower operating costs and save energy. This is not just about being green anymore; it's about fiscal commonsense in a slow economy.
Out of the box and investigative technologies are being evaluated that can affect greater efficiency and return on investment (ROI). The adoption of technologies like deduplication have accelerated this year showing that what was once a good idea for IT, is now a matter of survival.
Deduplication is recognized as the next evolutionary step in backup technology being both tangible and sensible. It eliminates duplicate data in secondary storage archives, which can slash media costs, streamlines management tasks and minimizes the bandwidth required to replicate data. In short, deduplication improves efficiency and saves money--just what is needed as IT budgets are tightened while mission-critical data continues to grow.
So what caused the proliferation of duplicated data in the first place?
Ironically, current industry standard backup practices are the number one cause of data duplication. In the interest of data protection, the traditional backup paradigm copies data to a safe secondary-storage repository over and over again, creating a monstrous overkill of backed-up information. Under this scenario, every backup exacerbates the problem.
Because secondary storage volumes are growing exponentially, companies need a way to dramatically reduce these data volumes. Regulatory requirements magnify the challenge, forcing businesses to change the way they look at data protection. By eliminating duplicate data and ensuring that data archives are as compact as possible, companies can keep more data online longer--at significantly lower costs.
Data deduplication can also minimize the bandwidth needed to transfer backup data to offsite archives. With the hazards of physically transporting tapes being well-established (damage, theft, loss, etc.), electronic transfer is fast becoming the offsite storage modality of choice for companies concerned about minimizing risks and protecting essential resources.
With so many deduplication solutions available, how do you choose? Each vendor claims their approach is best, leaving customers to sift through the hype and determine what will benefit their business the most. With that in mind, here are seven important criteria to consider when evaluating data deduplication solutions:
1. Integration with current environment--An effective data deduplication solution should be as non-disruptive as possible so an increased number of companies use virtual tape libraries (VTLs) to improve the quality of their backup without disruptive changes to policies, procedures or software.
This makes VTL-based data deduplication the least disruptive way to implement this technology. It also focuses on the largest pool of duplicated data: backups. Others are deploying a disk-to-disk backup paradigm, which requires a deduplication solution to present a network interface to the backup application. Introducing deduplication into this process simplifies and enhances disk-to-disk backups, performing deduplication without disruption to ongoing operations.
2. VTL capability--If data deduplication technology is implemented around a VTL, the capabilities of the VTL must be considered as part of the evaluation process. It is unlikely that the savings from data deduplication will override the difficulties caused by using a sub-standard VTL. Consider the functionality, performance, stability and support of the VTL as well as its deduplication extension.
3. Impact of deduplication on backup performance--It is important to consider where and when data deduplication takes place in relation to the backup process. Although some solutions attempt deduplication while data is being backed up, this inline method processes the backup stream as it comes into the deduplication appliance, making performance dependant on the single node's strength. Such an approach can slow down backups, jeopardize backup windows and degrade VTL performance over time.
For maximum manageability, the solution should allow for granular (tape- or group-level) policy-based deduplication based on a variety of factors: resource utilization, production schedules, time since creation and so on. In this way, storage efficiencies can be achieved while optimizing the use of system resources.
4. Scalability--Because the solution is being chosen for longer-term data storage, scalability, in terms of both capacity and performance, is an important consideration. Consider how much data you will want to keep on disk for fast access over the next five years. How will the data index system scale to your requirements?
A deduplication solution should provide an architecture that allows economic "right-sizing" for both the initial implementation and the long-term growth of the system. Clustering allows organizations to scale to meet growing capacity requirements--even for environments with many petabytes of data--without compromising deduplication efficiency or system performance. Clustering also inherently provides a high-availability environment, protecting the backup repository interface (VTL or file interface) and deduplication nodes by offering failover support.
5. Distributed topology support--Data deduplication delivers benefits throughout a distributed enterprise, not just in a single data center. A solution that includes replication and multiple levels of deduplication can achieve maximum benefits from the technology.
The solution should only require minimal bandwidth for the central site to determine whether the remote data is contained in the central repository. Only unique data across all sites should be replicated to the central site and subsequently to the disaster recovery (DR) site, to avoid excessive bandwidth requirements.
6. Highly available deduplication repository--It is extremely important to create a highly available deduplication repository. Since a very large amount of data has been consolidated in one location, risk tolerance for data loss is very low. Access to the deduplicated data repository is critical and should not be vulnerable to a single point of failure. The solution should have failover capability in the event of a node failure. Even if multiple nodes in a cluster fail, the company must be able to continue to recover its data and respond to the business.
7. Efficiency and effectiveness--File-based deduplication approaches do not reduce storage capacity requirements as much as those that analyze data at a sub-file or block level. Consider, for example, changing a single line in a 4-megabyte presentation. In a file-based solution, the entire file must be stored, doubling the storage required. If the presentation is sent to multiple people, as presentations often are, the negative effects multiply.
Most sub-file deduplication processes use some sort of "chunking" method to break up a large amount of data, such as a virtual tape cartridge, into smaller-sized pieces to search for duplicate data. Larger chunks of data can be processed at a faster rate, but less duplication is detected.
It's easier to detect more duplication in smaller chunks, but the overhead to scan the data is much higher.
If the "chunking" begins at the beginning of a tape (or data stream in other implementations), the deduplication process can be fooled by the metadata created by the backup software, even if the file is unchanged. However, if the solution can segregate the metadata and look for duplication in chunks within actual data files, the duplication detection will be much higher.
Some solutions even adjust chunk size based on information gleaned from the data formats. The combination of these techniques can lead to a 30 percent to 40 percent increase in the amount of duplicate data detected. This can have a major impact on the cost-effectiveness of the solution.
When the investment banking system in the United States experienced a financial crisis, it caused a ripple effect beyond North America and spread to Europe and Asia.
Companies in all industries are experiencing lower revenues and are deploying strict expense controls. Every IT department in the world is feeling the pressure of our current economy.
The mandate now and for the foreseeable future is to reduce capital expenditures, lower operating costs and save energy. This is not just about being green anymore; it's about fiscal commonsense in a slow economy.
Out of the box and investigative technologies are being evaluated that can affect greater efficiency and return on investment (ROI). The adoption of technologies like deduplication have accelerated this year showing that what was once a good idea for IT, is now a matter of survival.
Deduplication is recognized as the next evolutionary step in backup technology being both tangible and sensible. It eliminates duplicate data in secondary storage archives, which can slash media costs, streamlines management tasks and minimizes the bandwidth required to replicate data. In short, deduplication improves efficiency and saves money--just what is needed as IT budgets are tightened while mission-critical data continues to grow.
So what caused the proliferation of duplicated data in the first place?
Ironically, current industry standard backup practices are the number one cause of data duplication. In the interest of data protection, the traditional backup paradigm copies data to a safe secondary-storage repository over and over again, creating a monstrous overkill of backed-up information. Under this scenario, every backup exacerbates the problem.
Because secondary storage volumes are growing exponentially, companies need a way to dramatically reduce these data volumes. Regulatory requirements magnify the challenge, forcing businesses to change the way they look at data protection. By eliminating duplicate data and ensuring that data archives are as compact as possible, companies can keep more data online longer--at significantly lower costs.
Data deduplication can also minimize the bandwidth needed to transfer backup data to offsite archives. With the hazards of physically transporting tapes being well-established (damage, theft, loss, etc.), electronic transfer is fast becoming the offsite storage modality of choice for companies concerned about minimizing risks and protecting essential resources.
With so many deduplication solutions available, how do you choose? Each vendor claims their approach is best, leaving customers to sift through the hype and determine what will benefit their business the most. With that in mind, here are seven important criteria to consider when evaluating data deduplication solutions:
1. Integration with current environment--An effective data deduplication solution should be as non-disruptive as possible so an increased number of companies use virtual tape libraries (VTLs) to improve the quality of their backup without disruptive changes to policies, procedures or software.
This makes VTL-based data deduplication the least disruptive way to implement this technology. It also focuses on the largest pool of duplicated data: backups. Others are deploying a disk-to-disk backup paradigm, which requires a deduplication solution to present a network interface to the backup application. Introducing deduplication into this process simplifies and enhances disk-to-disk backups, performing deduplication without disruption to ongoing operations.
2. VTL capability--If data deduplication technology is implemented around a VTL, the capabilities of the VTL must be considered as part of the evaluation process. It is unlikely that the savings from data deduplication will override the difficulties caused by using a sub-standard VTL. Consider the functionality, performance, stability and support of the VTL as well as its deduplication extension.
3. Impact of deduplication on backup performance--It is important to consider where and when data deduplication takes place in relation to the backup process. Although some solutions attempt deduplication while data is being backed up, this inline method processes the backup stream as it comes into the deduplication appliance, making performance dependant on the single node's strength. Such an approach can slow down backups, jeopardize backup windows and degrade VTL performance over time.
For maximum manageability, the solution should allow for granular (tape- or group-level) policy-based deduplication based on a variety of factors: resource utilization, production schedules, time since creation and so on. In this way, storage efficiencies can be achieved while optimizing the use of system resources.
4. Scalability--Because the solution is being chosen for longer-term data storage, scalability, in terms of both capacity and performance, is an important consideration. Consider how much data you will want to keep on disk for fast access over the next five years. How will the data index system scale to your requirements?
A deduplication solution should provide an architecture that allows economic "right-sizing" for both the initial implementation and the long-term growth of the system. Clustering allows organizations to scale to meet growing capacity requirements--even for environments with many petabytes of data--without compromising deduplication efficiency or system performance. Clustering also inherently provides a high-availability environment, protecting the backup repository interface (VTL or file interface) and deduplication nodes by offering failover support.
5. Distributed topology support--Data deduplication delivers benefits throughout a distributed enterprise, not just in a single data center. A solution that includes replication and multiple levels of deduplication can achieve maximum benefits from the technology.
The solution should only require minimal bandwidth for the central site to determine whether the remote data is contained in the central repository. Only unique data across all sites should be replicated to the central site and subsequently to the disaster recovery (DR) site, to avoid excessive bandwidth requirements.
6. Highly available deduplication repository--It is extremely important to create a highly available deduplication repository. Since a very large amount of data has been consolidated in one location, risk tolerance for data loss is very low. Access to the deduplicated data repository is critical and should not be vulnerable to a single point of failure. The solution should have failover capability in the event of a node failure. Even if multiple nodes in a cluster fail, the company must be able to continue to recover its data and respond to the business.
7. Efficiency and effectiveness--File-based deduplication approaches do not reduce storage capacity requirements as much as those that analyze data at a sub-file or block level. Consider, for example, changing a single line in a 4-megabyte presentation. In a file-based solution, the entire file must be stored, doubling the storage required. If the presentation is sent to multiple people, as presentations often are, the negative effects multiply.
Most sub-file deduplication processes use some sort of "chunking" method to break up a large amount of data, such as a virtual tape cartridge, into smaller-sized pieces to search for duplicate data. Larger chunks of data can be processed at a faster rate, but less duplication is detected.
It's easier to detect more duplication in smaller chunks, but the overhead to scan the data is much higher.
If the "chunking" begins at the beginning of a tape (or data stream in other implementations), the deduplication process can be fooled by the metadata created by the backup software, even if the file is unchanged. However, if the solution can segregate the metadata and look for duplication in chunks within actual data files, the duplication detection will be much higher.
Some solutions even adjust chunk size based on information gleaned from the data formats. The combination of these techniques can lead to a 30 percent to 40 percent increase in the amount of duplicate data detected. This can have a major impact on the cost-effectiveness of the solution.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Vendors: Ample tests to nip tainted goods
Although some have blamed virus-infected products on shoddy manufacturing, hardware vendors insist there are adequate testing measures in place to sift out malware before equipment is shipped.
Reports of products shipped with malware have sprung up in the last two years, even as the pace of cybercrime escalates. In 2007, TomTom admitted it had shipped viruses on some of its satellite navigation devices. At that time, the company said it would take the "appropriate actions" to prevent similar incidents in future.
In the United States, there have also been instances of digital photo frames, hard drives and iPods infected with malware. The U.S. Department of Defense last year even temporarily banned the use of removable storage devices including thumb drives and CDs.
Businesses that discover their purchases are tainted with malware, may be able to seek legal reprieve, a legal expert said.
Under such circumstances, the customers can claim that the products purchased were defective or failed to meet the expected "merchantability standards", Bryan Tan, director of Keystone Law, said in an e-mail interview.
Contract terms, however, may state that products have been tested for viruses but not guarantee that they are virus-free.
Even when enterprises are found to suffer losses, the terms and conditions usually limit the loss to product exchange, "so businesses may be able to get replacements but if other losses are incurred, then such losses may not be covered", he added.
But hardware vendors ZDNet Asia contacted, said there are sufficient processes in place to ensure equipment shipped are free of viruses.
For hard drive maker Seagate, the products are subjected to "rigorous and thorough" testing before being packaged for shipment, a spokesperson said in an e-mail interview.
"Seagate does test for viruses and malware in our manufacturing and testing processes--running virus checks on all of our test equipment to ensure viruses are not introduced," the Singapore-based spokesperson said. "We also run a 'clean up' at the last step in the process as a final [step of] protection."
There are also "additional measures in place to ensure product quality, including security procedures at our manufacturing facilities to prevent electronics of any kind from being brought into the manufacturing area which may introduce viruses or malware", she added.
A Dell spokesperson based in Singapore said there are "multiple fail-safe measures" built into its processes to minimize malicious threats.
Industry-certified software and applications selected by customers have already been pre-tested on its hardware before installation, he explained. The testing includes checks to ensure there are no compatibility issues or malware.
Dell also has procedures to test non-mainstream software or applications specifically requested for by customers, the spokesperson added.
At press time, Lenovo and Nokia had not responded to queries. Samsung declined to comment for this story.
Reports of products shipped with malware have sprung up in the last two years, even as the pace of cybercrime escalates. In 2007, TomTom admitted it had shipped viruses on some of its satellite navigation devices. At that time, the company said it would take the "appropriate actions" to prevent similar incidents in future.
In the United States, there have also been instances of digital photo frames, hard drives and iPods infected with malware. The U.S. Department of Defense last year even temporarily banned the use of removable storage devices including thumb drives and CDs.
Legal reprieve for businesses
Businesses that discover their purchases are tainted with malware, may be able to seek legal reprieve, a legal expert said.
Under such circumstances, the customers can claim that the products purchased were defective or failed to meet the expected "merchantability standards", Bryan Tan, director of Keystone Law, said in an e-mail interview.
Contract terms, however, may state that products have been tested for viruses but not guarantee that they are virus-free.
Even when enterprises are found to suffer losses, the terms and conditions usually limit the loss to product exchange, "so businesses may be able to get replacements but if other losses are incurred, then such losses may not be covered", he added.
For hard drive maker Seagate, the products are subjected to "rigorous and thorough" testing before being packaged for shipment, a spokesperson said in an e-mail interview.
"Seagate does test for viruses and malware in our manufacturing and testing processes--running virus checks on all of our test equipment to ensure viruses are not introduced," the Singapore-based spokesperson said. "We also run a 'clean up' at the last step in the process as a final [step of] protection."
There are also "additional measures in place to ensure product quality, including security procedures at our manufacturing facilities to prevent electronics of any kind from being brought into the manufacturing area which may introduce viruses or malware", she added.
A Dell spokesperson based in Singapore said there are "multiple fail-safe measures" built into its processes to minimize malicious threats.
Industry-certified software and applications selected by customers have already been pre-tested on its hardware before installation, he explained. The testing includes checks to ensure there are no compatibility issues or malware.
Dell also has procedures to test non-mainstream software or applications specifically requested for by customers, the spokesperson added.
At press time, Lenovo and Nokia had not responded to queries. Samsung declined to comment for this story.
Monday, May 25, 2009
The Unfeeling and Lifeless Doll: Women Anti-Abuse ad
Counseling Services for Abused Women. The advertiser shows exactly its full understanding of the plight of abused women all over the world. The campaign’s copy of “Help Her Feel Human Again” is the truest description of what happens to women under abuse: the demise of their mental, psychological, and emotional health. They die before their time, if the abuse, indeed, even stops. For some, abuse has literally killed them.
Abuse is a universal
phenomenon. It cuts across all economic levels, cultures, and geographies. It can occur in a tribal society, as well as in a metropolitan setting. Both rich and poor women fall into this predicament. Abuse knows no religion, although some abusive practices that are borne of religious belief may not be construed by the female victims of abuse as such. This is, perhaps, the highest form of abuse next to being killed. Some victims do not even know that they are victims.
One out of three women in the world is a victim of abuse. Abuse is a top killer of women. It can come in various forms, aside from physical death, such as domestic violence or physical battery and sexual abuse such as rape. Abuse is, ultimately, not about abuse. It is about power. Abuse is what happens when gender that has been dictated by the norms of society, rears its ugly head. Abuse is a byproduct when the female sector of society is value-judged by the laws
of gender, as perpetrated by the male sector of society that basks in the glory of a patriarchal mindset.
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