my Computer Quest: August 2009

14 August, 2009

China: Filtering software will not be required

Image by Gen Kanai via Flickr

And after so much hoo-hah about filtering and screening software put upon PC manufacturers and also Google, China relents, or relaxes.

Whatever the term that you find appropriate to call it, they are no longer mandating the filtering software.

Read that news here.

The Megawoosh

Image via Wikipedia

The Megawoosh: One of the web's great fakes?

Have you seen this video? Do you believe it as real? Or a fake one? The decision is yours.

See it here.

China mobile users face jail for sexy texts

Image via Wikipedia

The phone being an easy way of doing things, right or wrong, now will have some "limiting clause" on its usage. So if you are one of those who find it an easy way with an easy escape route on its use of flirting or the likes, beware. Especially in China.

Read this news here.

07 August, 2009

An ultra easy way to store and restore

Image via Wikipedia

Aside from thumb drives, flash drives now have a new application: back-up flash drives.

Will it be trustworthy? Or, just like the thinning of chips resulting to thinning of gadgets and devices, will it ever be the ever-emerging trend to have smaller size but larger capacity gadgets?

Ultra Backup USB Flash Drive; read it here.

Pennsylvania gym killer blogged his own massacre

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I was quite taken by this news; seems like there are more and more people resorting to guns when they have problems to unload off their head and chest…

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Posted: 06 August 2009 1047 hrs

Police investigate an automobile in the parking lot outside a LA Fitness following a shooting inside the health club in Bridgeville, Pennsylvania

NEW YORK: A sexually frustrated man who killed three women in a Pennsylvania health club, then himself, blogged his preparations - with the final chilling entry announcing the "big day," police said Wednesday.

The killer, who late Tuesday burst into the LA Fitness Gym in Bridgeville, near Pittsburgh, and sprayed 36 bullets, apparently wrote the blog on a personal web page starting last November.

On the eve of the killings, he wrote: "Took off today, Monday, and tomorrow to practice my routine and make sure it is well polished... Tomorrow is the big day."

Local police superintendent Charles Moffatt said the killer, George Sodini, prepared meticulously.

After twice visiting the gym earlier in the day, Sodini entered the Latin dance class, turned off the lights and opened fire, Moffatt said in a nationally televised press conference.

Sodini carried four handguns, three of which were fired: two 9mm semi-automatics and a .45 caliber revolver he turned on himself. A total of 12 people were shot.

"He shot at least 36 times. He had clips of ammunition that held 30 rounds," Moffatt said, noting that the military-style ammunition had been legal since 2004, when a ban expired.

According to Moffatt, "there's nobody that was in that club that could have done anything to prevent Mr Sodini" from carrying out the murders.

The blog, which Moffatt said was being treated as genuine, and which was quickly pulled off the Internet, reveals a sinister, often banal mind of a man crippled by sexual frustration, anger at women and depression.

A picture of Sodini, 48, attached to the blog shows a lean, white male with slightly graying hair and wearing a smart blue shirt.

Moffatt said the blog clearly showed "the hatred in him" and that computer sleuths were looking into whether anyone saw the blog - and if so, why they didn't report it.

In the blog, Sodini wrote as far back as November 5, 2008, that he "planned to do this in the summer" but decided to see the result of the presidential election won by President Barack Obama.

In December, he again wrote that he had "planned to do this already" and sets January 6 as the new date.

"I wish life could be better for all and the crazy world can somehow run smoother. I wish I had answers. Bye," he apparently wrote less than two hours before the appointed time on that day.

But the next entry described him pulling out at the last minute: "It is 8:45 pm: I chickened out! Shit! I brought the loaded guns, everything. Hell!"

Throughout nine months of rambling entries, Sodini revealed his fixation on rejections from women and extreme sexual frustration.

"Who knows why. I am not ugly or too weird. No sex since July 1990 either (I was 29)," he wrote.

"Last time I slept all night with a girlfriend, it was 1982. Proof I am a total malfunction. Girls and women don't even give me a second look ANYWHERE. There is something BLATANTLY wrong with me."

He was angry at a brother whom he described as a bully and what he described as a distant relationship with his father. In April, he also blogged about his worries over being fired from his job, where the recession was having an impact.

Similar complaints were recorded by Sodini in a message found on him after the carnage, Moffatt said.

Ironically, the blogger wrote that going to the gym helped him relieve his psychological problems.

"My anger and rage is largely gone since I began lifting weights," he wrote in December last year.

But those positive feelings were fleeting and the blogger appeared set on preparing his destructive end.

"What is it like to be dead? I always think I am forgetting something, that's one reason I postponed," he wrote. "In this case, I cannot make a return trip!"

In the last entry, dated August 3, he showed alarm at meeting a happy neighbour, who he worried would distract him from the murders.

"I need to remain focused and absorbed COMPLETELY."

His last words on the blog: "Death lives!"

- AFP/yb

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source story here.

'Virtual' computers span the digital divide

One-on-one PC is now becoming a multi-user PC, which is 10 users to 1 PC, sharing the same machine.

Cost of computing now becomes 1/10, and PC's computing capability is utilized to the max.

Will this be a business threat?

See the news story here.

05 August, 2009

Seagate Technology to lay off 2,000 employees in Singapore

Image via Wikipedia

I'm taking the full test of this news story…

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By Ng Baoying, Channel NewsAsia

Posted: 04 August 2009 1547 hrs

A worker at Seagate Technology inspects a disc drive at the company's facility in Singapore. (file pic)

SINGAPORE: Seagate Technology announced on Tuesday it would relocate its hard disk drive manufacturing operations from Ang Mo Kio to other existing Seagate facilities by end-2010, laying off some 2,000 employees in the process.

The company said in a statement that this consolidation is necessary in order for it to further increase efficiency and reduce costs by leveraging investments across fewer manufacturing sites.

The statement also said that Singapore would remain a key strategic partner for Seagate, with a focus on high-value activities, and the company would continue to make strategic investments in the country.

Seagate has two other facilities in Singapore – located at Science Park and Woodlands.

Singapore is home to the company's only hard drive design centre and first volume manufacturing site outside of the United States, and the first Recording Media Operations facilities outside of North America.

Seagate said its Woodlands media operation, Seagate's Asia International Headquarters (IHQ), and the Science Park product development and design centre will remain in Singapore.

It said the company is giving every consideration to relocating some Ang Mo Kio employees to other Singapore operations. Employees ending their employment with Seagate will be offered retrenchment packages in line with industry standards, which include a month's pay for every year of service.

Singapore's labour movement said the move is a last resort for Seagate, which has been in talks with the employees' union over the past few weeks.

The company will work with the union and Singapore's Employment and Employability Institute (e2i) to help affected employees.

Halimah Yacob, deputy secretary-general, National Trades Union Congress (NTUC), said: "What is most important is not to focus on the retrenchment or the fact that 2,000 people are going to be unemployed.

"What's most critical for us is what kind of support and assistance can we provide to the workers who are going to be retrenched? This is where we work closely with the company and e2i in order to put the workers through training programmes, job placement."

She noted that retrenchments in the electronics sector occur for two reasons – fall in demand due to global economic downturn and internal restructuring for cost efficiency.

"Retrenchments in the electronics sector are typically due to two reasons... one is because of poor demand, weak orders that companies are facing. To some extent, this is temporary because you can resort to shorter work week, temporary plant shutdown and wait for the orders to come," said Mdm Halimah.

"But there's the other type – ongoing review and restructuring of operations. For global companies, they have plants all over the world, so they will look for the most efficient, effective, productive way to produce this particular kind of product."

Economists said such retrenchment exercises are not surprising.

Song Seng Wun, CEO & regional economist, CIMB-GK Research, said: "Disk drive operators have been moving out of Singapore over the last few years and it is a wonder that Seagate is still around in Singapore after so long. When we look at the data itself, disk drive value added to the overall manufacturing has declined steadily."

Disk drive manufacturing is labour intensive and analysts said it makes sense for firms to shift operations to countries like Thailand, Malaysia and China where costs are lower.

- CNA/so

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From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.