Youth warned against listening to loud MP3 players

October 14, 2008 – 3:20pm
Millions of youngsters across Europe could suffer permanent hearing loss after five years if they listen to MP3 players at too high a volume for more than five hours a week, EU scientists warned Monday.

The scientists’ study, requested by the European Commission, attacked the concept of "leisure noise," saying children and teenagers should be protected from increasingly high sound levels — with loud mobile phones also coming in for criticism.

"There has been increasing concern about exposure from the new generation of personal music players which can reproduce sounds at very high volumes without loss of quality," the Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said in a statement.

"Risk for hearing damage depends on sound level and exposure time," it said. More and more young people were exposed to the significant threat that leisure noise posed to hearing, it said.

Commission experts estimate that between 50 and 100 million people listen to portable music players on a daily basis.

If they listened for only five hours a week at more than 89 decibels, they would already exceed EU limits for noise allowed in the workplace, they said. But if they listened for longer periods, they risked permanent hearing loss after five years.

The scientists calculated the number of people in that risk category at between five and 10 percent of listeners, meaning up to 10 million people in the European Union.

Sales of personal music players have soared in EU countries in recent years, particularly of MP3 players.

Commission experts estimate unit sales between 184 and 246 million for all portable audio devices just over the last four years, of which MP3 players range between 124 and 165 million.

Mobile phones used at excessive volume also came under fire from Meglena Kuneva, the EU’s consumer affairs commissioner.

"I am concerned that so many young people … who are frequent users of personal music players and mobile phones at high acoustic levels, may be unknowingly damaging their hearing irrevocably," she said in the statement.


Posted in tech effects | No Comments »

Apple is about to unveil its updated laptops on October 14

October 10, 2008 – 12:55pm
               Apple Inc will unveil its updated laptops on October 14 and they may cost less, but analysts say the company’s drooping stock has already taken any change into account. "I think it’s already factored into the stock. People have been expecting this announcement for well over a month," said Andy Hargreaves of Pacific Crest Securities in Oregon. The company’s stock was up 1 percent at $90.64 in midday trading, but closed down 1 percent at $88.74 and, overall, it has lost about 56 percent of its value since closing at a year high of $202.96 on December 27, 2007. Apple enters the fourth quarter against a background of continuing headlines about falling stocks and failing banks, and a September in which retail sales dived beyond expectations. At minimum, Apple will use the event at its Cupertino, California, headquarters to refresh its laptop line by updating to the latest chips and it may also offer new designs. The Apple invitation said only: "The spotlight turns to notebooks." Occasionally, Apple unveils revolutionary new approaches at such events, but analysts shrugged when asked about the possibility. "You won’t know that until the day of the event," said Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies in Campbell, California. Analysts also raised the possibility of a drop in the sticker price for laptops that now start at $1,099, more than twice the cost of the cheapest of the Window-based laptops.
                 Apple chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer opened the door to speculation as long ago as July 21 during a discussion of the company’s computer line. The executive said the company introduces "new products that initially cost more because they deliver an entirely new level of value to the customer. Then we ride the cost curves down with value engineering and volume manufacturing, leaving us far ahead of our competitors." Bajarin was cautious and stopped short of forecasting price cuts. "It’s a possibility. We don’t know that for sure," he said. He said Apple emphasizes design and functionality, "but clearly they have become more price conscious as they have become more competitive."

Posted in tech effects, business stuff, 4 ur info | 1 Comment »

Internet group sues Bush for electronic eavesdropping

September 19, 2008 – 12:07pm
A non-profit Internet rights group on Thursday filed a lawsuit against President George W. Bush and others in his administration for the "massively illegal" surveillance of emails and telephone calls without court warrants.
 
The suit was filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which took the administration to task for what it argued is "illegal surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans."
 
EFF lawyers filed a suit against AT&T in 2006 charging the US telecoms giant had opened up its network to National Security Agency (NSA) agents without proper court-approved warrants.
 
This year Congress passed legislation granting US telecommunications firms immunity from domestic spying lawsuits.
 
Wrangling about the constitutionality of that act has stalled the AT&T lawsuit as well as a slew of similar litigation aimed at other telecommunications firms.
 
EFF lawyers said Thursday the new lawsuit is aimed squarely at government officials, thereby sidestepping the immunity act.
 
"Our goal in this new case against the government, as in our case against AT&T, is to dismantle this dragnet surveillance program as soon as possible," said EFF senior staff attorney Kevin Bankston.
 
"For years, the NSA has been engaged in a massive and massively illegal fishing expedition through AT&T’s domestic networks and databases of customer records."
 
The suit names Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, as well as attorneys general, the NSA director and 100 "john does" yet to be identified.
 
It accuses them of personally violating the US constitution and a host of federal laws by helping orchestrate or carry out illegal snooping of Internet and voice communications.
 
The lawsuit asks the court to order federal officials to account for and then destroy information illegally-obtained from AT&T databases and to pay unspecified cash damages.
 
Bankston said the EFF had ample evidence that the NSA "is vacuuming up millions upon millions of ordinary AT&T communications."
 
EFF attorneys expect federal officials to argue to the court that a "state secrets privilege" protects them from the litigation because information revealed while defending themselves could threaten national security.
 
Bankston dismissed such a defense, saying the EFF is not interested in exposing what US spies may have found but only whether they had proper legal authority to snoop on US citizens’ telephone and Internet communications.
 
The US District Court judge presiding over the suits against the telecom firms earlier rejected the "states secret" argument by government lawyers who have appealed his decision.
 
Consideration of the appeal has been suspended pending resolution of whether the granting of immunity to telecoms companies forces the dismissal of the cases in the lower court.


Posted in tech effects, 4 ur info | No Comments »

tEcHnOrAtI

July 12, 2008 – 4:24am

Finally my Technorati Profile is here.. please feel free to visit it.. good day


Posted in tech effects | No Comments »

Where The Web Is Weak

May 17, 2008 – 4:43pm
            Tolstoy wrote that happy families are all alike, while every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Something like the opposite might be said for Web sites. Many of the Web’s millions of insecure pages can be hacked with just one or two tricks. But patching the bugs in each of those vulnerable sites requires a unique solution.
        Case in point: Last month, a single attack ripped through the Web, infecting more than half a million sites including those of the Department of Homeland Security, the United Nations and the British Government. Using Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) searches, the attackers’ software–written partly in Chinese characters–identified sites vulnerable to a hacking technique called SQL injection and infected them en masse with malware designed to steal the bank codes of the sites’ visitors. (See " Google Hacking Goes to China.")
        In late April, the sites hosting that malware were identified by security researchers who in turn notified the Chinese Internet service provider and had them disconnected from the Internet. But the job of cleaning up the Web’s mess, says Jeremiah Grossman, the chief technology officer of White Hat Security, is far from over. In fact, Grossman says that the majority of those sites remain vulnerable to the same attack.
        The typical SQL injection vulnerability, he says, takes a site’s owner more than four months to locate and fix. That’s because, unlike exploits that affect a typical software program, Web vulnerabilities can’t be secured with an update downloaded from a vendor–every site has its own bug to excise. "We can’t issue a mass patch," says Grossman. "Each issue is unique. Together they present an almost catastrophic problem

Posted in tech effects | No Comments »

Video games don’t create killers-says new book

May 10, 2008 – 6:22am

         Playing video games does not turn children into deranged, blood-thirsty super-killers, according to a new book by a pair of Harvard researchers.

        Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson, a husband-and-wife team at Harvard Medical School, detail their views in "Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do", which came out last month and promises to reshape the debate on the effects of video games on kids. People should realize that there is no data to support the simple-minded concerns that video games cause violence.

      The pair reached that conclusion after conducting a two-year study of more than 1,200 middle-school children about their attitudes towards video games. It was a different approach than most other studies, which have focused on laboratory experiments that attempt to use actions like ringing a loud buzzer as a measure of aggression.They found that playing video games was a near-universal activity among children, and was often intensely social. But the data did show a link between playing mature-rated games and aggressive behavior. The researchers found that 51 percent of boys who played M-rated games — the industry’s equivalent of an R-rated movie, meaning suitable for ages 17 and up — had been in a fight in the past year, compared to 28 percent of non-M-rated gamers.

        The pattern was even stronger among girls, with 40 percent of those who played M-rated games having been in a fight in the past year, compared to just 14 percent for non-M players.The researchers also try to place video games in a larger context of popular culture. The anxiety many parents voice over video games largely mirrors the concerns raised when movies, comic books and television became popular.The book urges a common-sense approach that takes stock of the entire range of a child’s behavior. Frequent fighting, bad grades, and obsessive gaming can be signs for trouble.


Posted in tech effects, cautions | No Comments »

say what? is proudly powered by Blogsome. Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS). Based on a design by Bob.