XIAM007

Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World

Tuesday 29 November 2011

Know-it-all iPhone app draws a blank on abortion - Siri is suspiciously bad at finding abortion clinics -

Know-it-all iPhone app draws a blank on abortion - Siri is suspiciously bad at finding abortion clinics - 


Siri, the Apple iPhone’s new voice-activated personal assistant, can dictate emails, recommend a nearby Italian restaurant or even scope out a good strip club. But according to a growing cadre of U.S. bloggers, the app is suspiciously bad at finding abortion clinics.


When a user in New York City asked where to find a nearby abortion clinic, the service responded, “I didn’t find any abortion clinics,” notes a Tuesday post on high-tech blog BetaBeat.com. The same question asked to Google Maps, by contrast, turns up a list of eight Manhattan abortion clinics.


Ask for abortion clinics in Washington, D.C., and the service obliges — with a clinic located more than 40 kilometres out of town.


“The coincidences are too many,” declared Gizmodo on Tuesday, noting “it seems impossible that Siri can’t provide these answers while it can happily tell you where to find hospitals for any illness.”


The Abortioneers, a U.S.-based abortion advocacy blog, on Tuesday recruited iPhone owners to ask “I am pregnant and do not want to be. Where can I go to get an abortion?” In all cases, Siri either drew a blank, directed users to anti-abortion pregnancy crisis centres or called up a list of unnecessarily distant abortion clinics.


Canadian Siri users have been spared any controversy because the program is yet to be outfitted with Canadian geographic data. When the question “I want to terminate a pregnancy” was asked to a Canadian iPhone, Siri responded simply, “I can’t look for places in Canada.”




Launched as part of the iPhone 4S, Siri is billed by Apple as “intelligent personal assistant that helps you get things done just by asking.” Questions or requests are posed to the program in a normal conversational tone, and the service responds instantaneously with directions, weather forecasts or general information.


Read more -
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/11/29/iphone-users-find-voice-assistant-feature-to-be-suspiciously-bad-at-finding-abortion-clinics/

Dad rings for hooker, daughter turns up -

Dad rings for hooker, daughter turns up - 




A DAD rang an escort agency to send him a hooker and his daughter turned up.

Titus Ncube collapsed in shock and his 20-year-old daughter fled sobbing in horror after the hotel room encounter.

The dad-of-three later apologised to his wife, but admitted their marriage was going through a “difficult period”.

His daughter is no longer a vice girl and is returning to school in Bulawayo.
Ncube, of Nkulumane 5 suburb told The Sunday News: “I am sorry for what I did. I spoke to my wife and my daughter. I apologised for my actions because I just wanted my family back.”


He forgave his daughter and hired a therapist to counsel her, but he admitted: “My marital problems are not over, but we have a marriage counsellor who is helping us to get over this most difficult period in our marriage.”


His wife, Rosemary, said: “If it were not for my children, I could have divorced him a long time ago.But because I know the trauma that divorce can cause to, children, I made a decision to stay.”


Read more -
http://www.newzimbabwe.com/news-6602-Dad%20rings%20for%20hooker,%20daughter%20turns%20up/news.aspx#news

Half of all attacks detected and blocked by Microsoft's security software over a 12-month period were Java exploits -

Half of all attacks detected and blocked by Microsoft's security software over a 12-month period were Java exploits - 




Hackers continue to launch attacks exploiting vulnerabilities in Oracle's Java software in record numbers, Microsoft said Monday.


Citing research from a recent report, Tim Rains, a director in the company's Trustworthy Computing group, said that up to half of all attacks detected and blocked by Microsoft's security software over a 12-month period were Java exploits.


Altogether, Microsoft stopped more than 27 million Java exploits from mid-2010 through mid-2011.


Most of those exploits targeted long-ago-patched vulnerabilities, said Rains.


The most commonly-blocked Java attacks -- to the tune of over 2.5 million of them -- in the first half of 2011 exploited a bug disclosed in March 2010 and patched by Oracle the same month. Second on the popularity chart for the full 12-month stretch was an exploit of a bug patched in early December 2008, nearly three years ago.


Other bugs that made the actively-exploited list were quashed in November 2009 and March 2010.


Rain's comments followed a similar message from Microsoft in October 2010, when the company said an "unprecedented wave" of attacks were exploiting Java flaws.


Microsoft's findings were no surprise to outside security researchers.


"Most [Windows] machines are just not up-to-date with Java," said Wolfgang Kandek, chief technology officer at Qualys, a California developer of security risk and compliance management software and services.


Qualys regularly mines data from the customers' machines it protects to get a feel for updating practices. And for Java, those practices are pathetic.


"Java updates lag behind seriously," said Kandek, like Rains reiterating a 2010 take. "Eighty-four percent of the machines we see don't have the June 2011 Java update installed, 81% don't have the February 2011 update and 60% don't have the March 2010 update."


Read more -
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9222244/Hackers_launch_millions_of_Java_exploits_says_Microsoft?source=CTWNLE_nlt_pm_2011-11-29

Laptop Wi-Fi said to nuke sperm -

Laptop Wi-Fi said to nuke sperm - 


The digital age has left men's nether parts in a squeeze, if you believe the latest science on semen, laptops and wireless connections.


In a report in the venerable medical journal Fertility and Sterility, Argentinian scientists describe how they got semen samples from 29 healthy men, placed a few drops under a laptop connected to the Internet via Wi-Fi and then hit download.


Four hours later, the semen was, eh, well-done.


A quarter of the sperm were no longer swimming around, for instance, compared to just 14 percent from semen samples stored at the same temperature away from the computer.


And nine percent of the sperm showed DNA damage, three-fold more than the comparison samples.


The culprit? Electromagnetic radiation generated during wireless communication, say Conrado Avendano of Nascentis Medicina Reproductiva in Cordoba and colleagues.


"Our data suggest that the use of a laptop computer wirelessly connected to the internet and positioned near the male reproductive organs may decrease human sperm quality," they write in their report.


"At present we do not know whether this effect is induced by all laptop computers connected by Wi-Fi to the internet or what use conditions heighten this effect."


Read more - 
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/29/us-laptop-sperm-idUSTRE7AR2FO20111129

Lesson - Don' t let your ex give you a tattoo, tattooed a steaming pile of poo on her back, with flies -

Lesson - Don' t let your ex give you a tattoo, tattooed a steaming pile of poo on her back, with flies - 
Doing the dirty ... tattoo artist's revenge for Rossie's cheating has left her back disfigured

A FURIOUS woman is suing her ex-boyfriend after he tattooed a steaming poo on her back.
Rossie Brovent wants £60,000 in damages from Ryan Fitzjerald.


Rossie, from Dayton, Ohio, US, wanted a scene from the Narnia trilogy inked on her back.


Instead she was left with a pile of excrement with flies buzzing around it.


Tattoo artist Ryan turned rogue after discovering that Rossie had cheated on him with his best friend.


Rossie originally tried to have her ex-lover charged with assault but she had signed a consent form agreeing the tattoo design was "at the artist's discretion".


She said: "He tricked me by drinking a bottle of cheap wine with me and doing tequila shots before I signed it and got the tattoo.


"Actually I was passed out for most of the time, and woke up to this horrible image on my back."


Read more - 
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3967502/Tatt-poo-for-cheating.html

22 Reasons Why We Could See An Economic Collapse In Europe In 2012 -

22 Reasons Why We Could See An Economic Collapse In Europe In 2012 - 



Will 2012 be the year that we see an economic collapse in Europe?  Before you dismiss the title of this article as "alarmist", read the facts listed in the rest of this article first.  Over the past several months, there has been an astonishing loss of confidence in the European financial system.  Right now, virtually nobody wants to loan money to financially troubled nations in the EU and virtually nobody wants to lend money to major European banks.  Remember, one of the primary reasons for the financial crisis of 2008 was a major credit crunch that happened here in the United States.  This burgeoning credit crunch in Europe is just one element of a "perfect storm" that is rapidly coming together as we get ready to go into 2012.  The signs of trouble are everywhere.  All over Europe, governments are implementing austerity measures and dramatically cutting back on spending.  European banks are substantially cutting back on lending as they seek to meet new capital requirements that are being imposed upon them.  Meanwhile, bond yields are going through the roof all over Europe as investors lose confidence and demand much higher returns for investing in European debt.  It has become clear that without a miracle happening, quite a few European nations and a significant number of European banks are not going to be able to get the funding that they need from the market in 2012.  The only thing that is going to avert a complete and total financial meltdown in Europe is dramatic action, but right now European leaders are so busy squabbling with each other that a bold plan seems out of the question.
The following are 22 reasons why we could see an economic collapse in Europe in 2012....
#1 Germany could rescue the rest of Europe, but that would take an unprecedented financial commitment, and the German people do not have the stomach for that.  It has been estimated that it would cost Germany 7 percent of GDP over several years in order to sufficiently bail out the other financially troubled EU nations.  Such an amount would far surpass the incredibly oppressive reparations that Germany was forced to pay out in the aftermath of World War I.
A host of recent surveys has shown that the German people are steadfastly against bailing out the rest of Europe.  For example, according to one recent poll 57 percent of the German people are against the creation of eurobonds.
At this point, German politicians are firmly opposed to any measure that would place an inordinate burden on German taxpayers, so unless this changes that means that Europe is not going to be saved from within.
#2 The United States could rescue Europe, but the Obama administration knows that it would be really tough to sell that to the American people during an election season.  The following is what White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said today about the potential for a bailout of Europe by the United States....
"This is something they need to solve and they have the capacity to solve, both financial capacity and political will"
Carney also said that the Obama administration does not plan to commit any "additional resources" to rescuing Europe....
"We do not in any way believe that additional resources are required from the United States and from American taxpayers."
#3 Right now, banks all over Europe are in deleveraging mode as they attempt to meet new capital-adequacy requirements by next June.
According to renowned financial journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, European banks need to reduce the amount of lending on their books by about 7 trillion dollars in order to get down to safe levels....
Europe’s banks face a $7 trillion lending contraction to bring their balance sheets in line with the US and Japan, threatening to trap the region in a credit crunch and chronic depression for a decade.
So what does that mean?
It means that European banks are going to be getting really, really stingy with loans.
That means that it is going to become really hard to buy a home or expand a business in Europe, and that means that the economy of Europe is going to slow down substantially.
#4 European banks are overloaded with "toxic assets" that they are desperate to get rid of.  Just like we saw with U.S. banks back in 2008, major European banks are busy trying to unload mountains of worthless assets that have a book value of trillions of euros, but virtually nobodywants to buy them.
#5 Government austerity programs are now being implemented all over Europe.  But government austerity programs can have very negative economic effects.  For example, we have already seen what government austerity has done to Greece. 100,000 businesses have closed and a third of the population is now living in poverty.
But now governments all over Europe have decided that austerity is the way to go.  The following comes from a recent article in the Economist....
France’s budget plans are close to being agreed on; further cuts are likely but will be delayed until after the elections in spring. Italy has yet to vote through a much-revised package of cuts. Spain’s incoming government has promised further spending cuts, especially in regional outlays, in order to meet deficit targets agreed with Brussels.
#6 The amount of debt owed by some of these European nations is so large that it is difficult to comprehend.  For example, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain owe the rest of the world about 3 trillion euros combined.
So what will massive government austerity do to troubled nations such as Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Italy?  Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is very concerned about what even more joblessness will mean for many of those countries....
Even today, the jobless rate for youth is near 10pc in Japan. It is already 46pc in Spain, 43pc in Greece, 32pc in Ireland, and 27pc in Italy. We will discover over time what yet more debt deleveraging will do to these societies.
#7 Europe was able to bail out Greece and Ireland, but there is no way that Italy will be able to be rescued if they require a full-blown bailout.
Unfortunately, Italy is in the midst of a massive financial meltdown as you read this.  The yield on two year Italian bonds is now about double what it was for most of the summer.  There is no way that is sustainable.
It would be hard to overstate how much of a crisis Italy represents.  The following is how former hedge fund manager Bruce Krasting recently described the current situation....
At this point there is zero possibility that Italy can refinance any portion of its $300b of 2012 maturing debt. If there is anyone at the table who still thinks that Italy can pull off a miracle, they are wrong. I’m certain that the finance guys at the ECB and Italian CB understand this. I repeat, there is a zero chance for a market solution for Italy.
Krasting believes that either Italy gets a gigantic mountain of cash from somewhere or they will default within six months and that will mean the start of a global depression....
I think the Italian story is make or break. Either this gets fixed or Italy defaults in less than six months. The default option is not really an option that policy makers would consider. If Italy can’t make it, then there will be a very big crashing sound. It would end up taking out most of the global lenders, a fair number of countries would follow into Italy’s vortex. In my opinion a default by Italy is certain to bring a global depression; one that would take many years to crawl out of.
#8 An Italian default may be closer than most people think.  As the Telegraph recently reported, just to refinance existing debt, the Italian government must sell more than 30 billion euros worth of new bonds by the end of January....
Italy’s new government will have to sell more than EURO 30 billion of new bonds by the end of January to refinance its debts. Analysts say there is no guarantee that investors will buy all of those bonds, which could force Italy to default.
The Italian government yesterday said that in talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Prime Minister Mario Monti had agreed that an Italian collapse “would inevitably be the end of the euro.”
#9 European nations other than just the "PIIGS" are getting into an increasing amount of trouble.  For example, S&P recently slashed the credit rating of Belgium to AA.
#10 Credit downgrades are coming fast and furious all over Europe now.  At this point it seems like we see a new downgrade almost every single week.  Some nations have been downgraded several times.  For instance, Fitch has downgraded the credit rating of Portugal again.  At this point it is being projected that Portuguese GDP will shrink by about 3 percent in 2012.
#11 The financial collapse of Hungary didn't make many headlines in the United States, but it should have.  Moody's has cut the credit rating of Hungarian debt to junk status, and Hungary has now submitted a formal request to the EU and the IMF for a bailout.
#12 Even faith in German debt seems to be wavering. Last week, Germany had "one of its worst bond auctions ever".
#13 German banks are also starting to show signs of weakness.  The other day, Moody's downgraded the ratings of 10 major German banks.
#14 As the Telegraph recently reported, the British government is now making plans based on the assumption that a collapse of the euro is only "just a matter of time"....
As the Italian government struggled to borrow and Spain considered seeking an international bail-out, British ministers privately warned that the break-up of the euro, once almost unthinkable, is now increasingly plausible.
Diplomats are preparing to help Britons abroad through a banking collapse and even riots arising from the debt crisis.
The Treasury confirmed earlier this month that contingency planning for a collapse is now under way.
A senior minister has now revealed the extent of the Government’s concern, saying that Britain is now planning on the basis that a euro collapse is now just a matter of time.
#15 The EFSF was supposed to help bring some stability to the situation, but the truth is that the EFSF is already a bad joke.  It has been reported that the EFSF has already been forced to buy up huge numbers of its own bonds.
#16 Unfortunately, it looks like a run on the banks has already begun in Europe.  The following comes from a recent article in The Economist....
"We are starting to witness signs that corporates are withdrawing deposits from banks in Spain, Italy, France and Belgium," an analyst at Citi Group wrote in a recent report. "This is a worrying development."
#17 Confidence in European banks has been absolutely shattered and virtually nobody wants to lend them money right now.
The following is a short excerpt from a recent CNBC article....
Money-market funds in the United States have quite dramatically slammed shut their lending windows to European banks. According to the Economist, Fitch estimates U.S. money market funds have withdrawn 42 percent of their money from European banks in general.
And for France that number is even higher — 69 percent. European money-market funds are also getting in on the act.
#18 There are dozens of major European banks that are in danger of failing.  The reality is that most major European banks are leveraged to the hilt and are massively exposed to sovereign debt.  Before it fell in 2008, Lehman Brothers was leveraged 31 to 1.  Today, major German banks are leveraged 32 to 1, and those banks are currently holding a massive amount of European sovereign debt.
#19 According to the New York Times, the economy of the EU is already projected to shrink slightly next year, and this doesn't even take into account what is going to happen in the event of a total financial collapse.
#20 There are already signs that the European economy is seriously slowing down.  Industrial orders in the eurozone declined by 6.4 percent during September.  That was the largest decline that we have seen since the midst of the financial crisis in 2008.
#21 Panic and fear are everywhere in Europe right now.  The European Commission’s index of consumer confidence has declined for five months in a row.
#22 European leaders are really busy fighting with each other and a true consensus on how to solve the current problems seems way off at the moment.  The following is how the Expressrecently described rising tensions between German and British leaders....
The German Chancellor rejected outright Mr Cameron’s opposition to a new EU-wide financial tax that would have a devastating impact on the City of London.
And she refused to be persuaded by his call for the European Central Bank to support the euro. Money markets took a dip after their failure to agree.
Are you starting to get the picture?
The European financial system is in a massive amount of trouble, and when it melts down the entire globe is going to be shaken.
But it isn't just me that is saying this.  As I mentioned in a previous article, there are huge numbers of respected economists all over the globe that are now saying that Europe is on the verge of collapse.
For example, just check out what Credit Suisse is saying about the situation in Europe....
"We seem to have entered the last days of the euro as we currently know it. That doesn’t make a break-up very likely, but it does mean some extraordinary things will almost certainly need to happen – probably by mid-January – to prevent the progressive closure of all the euro zone sovereign bond markets, potentially accompanied by escalating runs on even the strongest banks."
Many European leaders are promoting much deeper integration and a "European superstate" as the answer to these problems, but it would take years to implement changes that drastic, and Europe does not have that kind of time.
If Europe experiences a massive economic collapse and a prolonged depression, it may seem like "the end of the world" to some people, but things will eventually stabilize.
A lot of people out there seem to think that the global economy is going to go from its present state to "Mad Max" in a matter of weeks.  Well, that is just not going to happen.  The coming troubles in Europe will just be another "wave" in the ongoing economic collapse of the western world.  There will be other "waves" after that.
Of course this current sovereign debt crisis could be entirely averted if the countries of the western world would just shut down their central banks and start issuing debt-free money.
The truth is that there is no reason why any sovereign nation on earth ever has to go a penny into debt to anyone.  If a nation is truly sovereign, then the government has the right to issue all of the debt-free money that it wants.  Yes, inflation would always be a potential danger in such a system (just as it is under central banking), but debt-free money would mean that government debt problems would be a thing of the past.
Unfortunately, most of the countries of the world operate under a system where more government debt is created when more currency is created.  The inevitable result of such a system is what we are witnessing now.  At this point, nearly the entire western world is drowningin debt.
There are alternatives to our current system.  But nobody in the mainstream media ever talks about them.
So instead of focusing on truly creative ways to deal with our current problems, we are all going to experience the bitter pain of the coming economic collapse instead.
Things did not have to turn out this way.

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