Bomb blasts hit remote Myanmar dam project

ဒီေန႔ ျမစ္ဆံုေရအားလွ်ပ္စစ္ စီမံကိန္းမွာ ဗံုးေလးလံုး ထပ္မံေပါက္ကြဲတယ္ ဆိုတဲ့သတင္းပါ။ 

Updated at: 1355 PST, Saturday, April 17, 2010
YANGON: A series of bomb blasts at the site of a controversial dam project in a remote part of Myanmar destroyed cars and buildings and left one man injured on Saturday, an official said.

The explosions took place in the early hours of the morning at four locations where the Myitsone Dam is under construction in the country's northernmost Kachin state, the official said on condition of anonymity.

"One engineer was slightly injured. Some cars and buildings were destroyed because of the blasts," he said.

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အထူး၀မ္းနည္းေၾကကဲြျခင္း

ရန္ကုန္သၾကၤန္ု အၾကမ္းဖက္ဗံုးေဖာက္ခဲြ မွုမွာအျပစ္မဲ့စြာ ေသဆံုးဒဏ္ရာ ရသူေတြအတြက္ ေျပာမျပတတ္ေအာင္ဆို႔နစ္ ေၾကကဲြ၀မ္းနည္းမိျပီး။ လူမဆန္တဲ့ ျပည္တြင္း/ျပည္ပ မွ ကိုယ္တိုင္ကိုယ္က် အၾကမ္းဖက္ ဗံုးေဖာက္ခဲြသူနဲ႔ ဦးစီးခ်ဳပ္ကိုင္သူေေတြ ကိုအျမန္ဆံုး ေဖာ္ထုတ္ျပီး အျပင္းထန္ဆံုးအျပစ္ဒဏ္ အျမန္ဆံုးေပးႏုိင္ပါေစ။

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Top 100 Youtube Hits of All Time

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Are you a student? Get Windows Server 2008 R2 for FREE!

Hey Students! Are you currently taking, or planning to take, IT classes? Then this is an offer you won’t want to miss. Thanks to their DreamSpark program, Microsoft is currently offering Windows Server 2008 R2 to eligible high school and college students… for free! You do need a Windows Live ID and a valid student e-mail address, but then you can download an OS installation disc image file. WS 2008 R2 is based on the Windows NT 6.1 kernel – the same kernel as in Windows 7, with a similar user interface. This OS normally costs $1029, so it’s a hell of a deal.

[Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition]

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Titan is Panasonic’s Amazing New Dancing Robot

His name is Titan, he’s 8-feet tall, and he’s the cylon-looking robotic entertainment machine unveiled by Panasonic at Dubai’s GITEX 2009 conference. Apart from looking like something that would run after you to kill you, Titan can actually sing and dance like you wouldn’t believe it. Check him out below.

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Coming soon: Grand Theft iPhone

Yesterday we brought you news of how the iPhone can be used to fight crime (albeit crime that was provoked by the phone itself.) Today crime comes to the iPhone.

Rockstar has announced it will be bringing its DS game Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars to the device via the iPhone app store.

The company says the content of the game will be identical, though some textures in the graphics will “look low-res” in comparison to the console versions. It also said the control system will be slightly different (and closer to full-size consoles) in that there will be an on-screen representation of a control stick which will be controlled by the player’s thumb.

Rockstar staff haven’t spoken out yet about the technical work involved in translating the game from the DS (and the PSP) to the iPhone. If the process isn’t too onerous, and if the game gets good sales and reviews, there could be a serious market for similar conversions.

The pricing of the game will also be interesting. The DS edition had a list price of $34.99, which would seem far too high for even a desirable iPhone app. In theory an app version should be much cheaper because there’s no need for packaging or physical media, but as legal music download sites have shown, that doesn’t always lead to as much of a discount as you might expect.

Patrick Klepek at G4TV makes a good point on the subject: unlike with console games, the iPhone distribution set-up means a developer can instantly change the price. That could mean it’s worth Rockstar trying a high price and then lowering it if sales start poorly.

As always with iPhone apps, there’s the question of the approval process. As overblown as many criticisms of GTA’s content are, it’s clearly an adult game and, while that should now be workable thanks to adult content filters on the device, you can never be sure what will raise red flags with the vetters.

CNET reports that Rockstar “had no trouble with Apple’s App Store policies and that the game will be made available as is.” However, it’s not clear if that means Apple has approved it, or if Rockstar simply believes the game should meet the rules.

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Set up hot keys without any added software on Windows XP or better.

It’s very annoying and counter productive for your hands to leave the keyboard as you use your mouse to click, click, clickity click click away at something.

Join the ranks of power users to add keyboard shortcuts for every computer task you do. Yup any task!

Built into Windows is the ability to let you assign a keyboard command to any shortcut icon on your computer. Just right-click on the icon you want to assign a shortcut to, click Properties, and click in the ‘Shortcut key’ field. Then enter in the combo of keys you want to use to launch the shortcut; it has to have one standard character (A-Z 1-0) plus two or three of the control keys (CTRL, ALT , or the Windows key.)

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Nikon Coolpix S1000pj camera offers truly cinematic experience

Many, if not most, pocket gadgets that people invent are largely needless as they simply combine two existing tools for no particularly useful reason. But every so often somebody comes up with a “twofer” that genuinely solves a problem.

Here’s a problem you may well have experienced (though you might need the marketing men to point it out to you, just as they did with “How come you have to decide what music to listen to before you leave the house?”): You go out for the day, take a bunch of cool photos, and then you want to show them to your friends right away.

Option A is to crowd round the tiny screen on the back of the camera and either squint or pass the camera round. Option B is find a computer and either hook up the camera or fiddle about getting the memory card out and into a suitable slot or adaptor. That’s not exactly convenient.

Enter Nikon with option C: a camera with a built-in projector.



The Coolpix S1000pj is a pretty standard 12.1 megapixel digital camera with a 5x wide angle zoom. Standard that is, except that all you need is a flat wall surface and you can project an image ranging for 5 to 40 inches in diameter.

To make things even better, the camera records and projects video. It’s not exactly an HD picture, but rest assured that if you’re in the bathroom when your friend does that silly dance, gets blown out by a potential mate or is the victim of a fly-by pigeon attack, you’ll be seeing it in near life-size footage the moment you return. And the camera has a speaker, so you’ll hear every cringe, insult or splat.

There is one other feature that may come in useful: a Skin Softening tool which acts as a virtual airbrush to remove skin blemishes. Given the potential for the projector to get a lot of use in late night/adult beverage situations, that might be best for all concerned.

For those interested in the logistics of building a projector into a camera, Gearlog has diagrams of how the whole thing fits together.

[Coolpix S1000pj - $429.95 - Available for pre-order on Amazon.com]

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Nasa explains its Mars voyage strategies

Nasa has detailed how a hypothetical manned mission to Mars would work. But while that’s a dream, the agency is funding attempts to use private firms to cut the costs of space travel.

The Mars mission is outlined in an interview with Imaginova (the firm behind Space.com) which has been syndicated to sites such as Fox News. It details how there are two main options being explored.

The first is to use a nuclear reactor to heat a gas to temperatures high enough to produce enough thrust to complete the journey. The second option is based on current space shuttle technology: a chemical engine using liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. With both techniques, the return journey would be powered by on-board methane and liquid oxygen taken from Mars’ atmosphere.

However the astronauts got there, there would be plenty of preparation work. The plan would be to get as much equipment in place as possible through unmanned vehicles. This could involve using equipment to produce oxygen and even water from Mars’ natural resources so that it was ready for the astronauts when they arrived.

With the astronauts expected to spend as long as 500 days on Mars, they’d have to be completely self-sufficient, particularly given a 40 minute delay in communications with Earth. There are even plans to have equipment on board the manned shuttle to grow fresh vegetables.

While visiting Mars is still merely an idea, Nasa is already exploring new ways of funding journeys closer to home. It’s paying $500 million to private companies which want to run commercial space flights. The firms have been given until the end of next year to conclusively demonstrate they can get private vehicles to the International Space Station and back.

If they meet this target, they will get contracts worth $1.6 billion for 12 supply mission to the statement, approximately one third of the amount it currently costs Nasa to carry out such operations. Using private firms is seen as a way of solving the shortfall in public funding without having to rely on foreign governments.

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Pandora celebrates as online radio escapes royalty devastation

Online music site Pandora has been saved from closure after the music and internet industries finally reached a deal over royalty rates. It’s a major boost for the online radio industry, though there’s still a significant disparity between online and over-the-air radio.

Online radio in the US is governed by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and operates under legally mandated royalty rates. In early 2007, the panel of judges which sets these rates decided on a steep rise which would take royalties from 0.08 cents to 0.19 cents per song starting next year.

These seemingly tiny sums mount up: in Pandora’s case, it would have taken the proportion of its revenue which it had to spend on royalties from just under 30% to around 70%, making the business financially unviable.

After a lengthy debate, which included Pandora and other online stations successfully lobbying Congress for extra time to iron out a deal, the record industry has agreed to a plan. As might be expected from such intense negotiations, it’s a far from simple compromise.

The key points are that online streaming services earning more than $1.25 million a year will either pay royalties of 0.093 cents per song (rising gradually to 0.14 cents in 2014), or a flat rate of 25% of revenue, whichever is the higher figure. Smaller firms won’t pay per-song revenues and will usually pay a smaller percentage of royalties, though some firms may pay based on their overall costs.

The deal only applies to sites which solely deal in streaming music and don’t sell other goods or services. In theory, internet firms don’t have to sign up to the deal and are open to attempt separate negotiations. However, assuming the deal gets Congressional approval (which appears likely), any firm has an automatic right to sign up for the new rates and can then operate without fear of the music industry pursuing them for extra cash.

As Pandora will likely wind up having to pay the per-song royalties, it’s introducing user fees for the first time. Users will still be allowed free accounts, but these will be limited to 40 hours per month. Those who want to exceed this limit – which around 10 per cent of users currently do – will have to pay a 99c fee each month.

Despite the deal likely saving his business, Pandora owner Tim Westergren remains disgruntled that internet radio stations must pay royalties while over-the-air stations don’t pay any fees to music companies. He’s still lobbying for a system by which all types of radio pay the same royalties.

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