US Navy lesbian couple share first gay dockside kiss

Two female US sailors have become the first same-sex couple to share the traditional dockside "first kiss" since the US ended a ban on gays in the army.
Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta, who had been at sea for 80 days, won the right to be the first person to kiss her partner on shore in a raffle.
The couple said the moment had been "a long time coming".
The US Army's Don't Ask Don't Tell policy was lifted in September, after years of debate.

The couple said they were happy they could
"finally be honest" about their relationship

The policy had barred openly gay men and women from serving in the military.
Crowds were waiting at the Virginia Beach docks in Virginia to greet loved ones arriving back on USS Oak Hill after a tour of duty in Central America.
They cheered as 23-year-old PO Gaeta walked off the ship and shared a brief kiss with her girlfriend of two years, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell, 22.
Those at the docks had not known in advance that the traditional moment was to involve the couple, said the Associated Press news agency.
PO Gaeta told local media that crew members traditionally hold a raffle before coming back to shore, drawing names for "winners of first hugs and first kisses".
She said she had bought 50 raffle tickets at a $1 each, but that others had bought far more.

Don't ask, don't tell

• Introduced by President Bill Clinton in 1993
• Compromise measure after he tried to repeal the ban on gays in the military
• Its original name in full was 'Don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue'
• Ended by President Obama, despite Republican opposition

The couple, who met in training, said they were happy they could finally be honest about their relationship.

"It's nice to be able to be myself. It's been a long time coming," said PO Gaeta.
PO Snell said her partner had told her of the kiss a few days ago and she had "freaked out - in a good way".
"I'm a little nervous, you know. But I've been waiting since she left," she said.
A Navy spokeswoman told Reuters the military "doesn't really keep track of stuff like that" but that she believed this was the first same-sex homecoming kiss.
"To the Navy, (it was) really just a normal homecoming," said Ensign Sylvia Landis.

Source BBC

Read more »

Posted in: Entertainment,Society,USA

The woman credited with creating the sexy single girl

Half a century after the publication of Sex and the Single Girl, frank assessments of sexual mores are everywhere - in films, fiction and myriad magazine columns. It wasn't always that way, writes Karen Krizanovich.

Helen Gurley Brown didn't invent the single girl. History is paved with unmarried women, among them Elizabeth I, Emily and Anne Bronte, Susan B Anthony and Jane Austen.
But before Brown's landmark Sex and the Single Girl, a woman who was unmarried and childless was an oddball.

Sex and the City's Carrie Bradshaw, Joan from Mad Men
and Bridget Jones would not exist without Sex and the Single Girl

Among superhero spinsters like Florence Nightingale and Dorothy Parker, an ordinary unmarried woman had the whiff of something wrong with her - some obstacle or horrible personal flaw that stopped her from the exalted roles of wife and mother.
What Helen Gurley Brown and her landmark book Sex And The Single Girl did was to show how spinsterhood actually was and to furnish a lively, hilarious chapter-by-chapter guide to its nuances and pitfalls.
With chapter titles such as Women Alone? Oh Come Now!, The Availables: The Men in Your Life and The Affair: From Beginning to End, the book was a runaway hit, selling two million copies in three weeks and making many bestseller lists, including the New York Times's.

Critically, Sex And The Single Girl was either loved or hated - and surprisingly lambasted by some feminists such as Betty Friedan.

Karen Krizanovich presents Sex and the Single Girl
on BBC Radio 4, Thursday 22 December, 11:30 GMT.

A feminist with different views from the first wave of more militant activists, Brown knew from her own experience the needs of this new generation of women.
A female workforce flooded cities like New York, where cheap secretarial power was needed. Along with the invention of the contraceptive pill (the subject of which, along with abortion and lesbianism, was edited from the book's final version), this was the beginning of women competing with men as co-workers and sexual entities.
Brown didn't see men as the enemy - nor was she necessarily against marriage and children.
She agreed that men and children were wonderful, but she emphasised that women must have a life of their own. Brown's "single girl" became a kind of female James Bond armed with powerful social, vocational and sexual know-how.
Brown once said: "Bad girls go everywhere." She meant her single girl was someone men wanted and women wanted to be.
Brown also knew, as a self-confessed shy girl, or "mouseburger", that many women didn't want a radical feminist manifesto - they wanted a softer, more alluring role model who could nevertheless deliver Machiavellian tips.

Sex and the Single Girl chapters

• Women Alone? Oh Come Now!
• The Availables: The Men in Your Life
• Where to Meet Them
• How to be Sexy
• Nine to Five
• Money Money Money
• The Apartment
• The Care and Feeding of Everybody
• The Shape You're In.
• The Wardrobe
• Kisses and Make-Up
• The Affair: From the Beginning to End
• The Rich, Full Life

Sex And The Single Girl (and later on, Cosmopolitan magazine) showed women how to get what they wanted by working within the male-dominated society rather than at odds with it and in that way, her approach shows the cunning of "female thinking".

She encouraged single women to use everything at their disposal to survive and succeed - including sex.
On that count, Brown can still shock - she said women could have sex with anyone, even married men. Once she suggested that women utter specific words during their partner's orgasm, a Pavlovian technique to associate her goals with his pleasure.
Brown's wildly imaginative advice suggested a whole new world of possibilities, many of which were made to sound plausible by Brown's unique delivery.
As the director of promotion and publicity at Bernard Geis Associates which promoted Sex and the Single Girl, Letty Cottin Pogrebin says: "[Brown] has a way of saying the most outrageous things in the sweetest, most polite voice. She is really preaching equality of a sort that was not seen or heard about."
Sex and the Single Girl's message remains controversial. As Observer columnist Katharine Whitehorn says, "the thing that was absolutely staggering was that there isn't a single word in [the book] of any of this having any moral consequence at all."
At the time, no-one knew the moral consequences of the 1960s, which until much later in that decade, retained much of the conservatism of the 1950s. Brown was merely highlighting a social phenomenon as it happened.
The reach of Sex and the Single Girl is wide and long. Bridget Jones would not exist without Helen Gurley Brown, ditto TV's Mad Men.

Helen Gurley Brown told Vanity Fair magazine in 2007 that
her greatest achievement was "editing Cosmopolitan successfully
so Hearst didn't have to close it down in 1965, when it was losing
tons of money". There are now 59 editions of Cosmopolitan
all over the world.

Mad Men's creator and executive producer Matthew Weiner admits Sex and the Single Girl directly influenced Mad Men - particularly the character of Joan (played by Christina Hendricks).

"The style and thoughts in this book have not disappeared," says Weiner. "They are still part of the culture. The fact that it is Sex and the Single Girl, that retro concept of the powerlessness of some innocent going into the office, I don't think that's changed. "It's still a primary issue: how do I not become a man. Why do I have to become a man to succeed? And when I do become a man, it doesn't get me where I need to go because men don't respond to it."
Three years after the book's publication, Brown went on to edit the ground-breaking Cosmopolitan magazine, for which she remained US editor until 1997. She continued to court controversy.
Today, Brown, born in 1922, no longer wishes to be in the public eye but she was still named by Slate as the 13th most powerful American over 80.
Sex and the Single Girl was never meant as a hardcore political tome.
It is a saucy, knowing guidebook to the pleasures of being a single young woman. The original version of "girl power", it didn't envisage the ladette but it did open the world's eyes to what had been very private before - sex and its social dynamic.
What Brown wrote was shocking because it was the awful truth as summed up by Erica Jong.
"Men and women, women and men. It will never work," she said. And yet it does.

Read more »

Posted in: Entertainment

Kim Jong-il death: Seoul 'showing no hostility'

North Korean state media say the population
is grieving for long-time leader Kim Jong-il

South Korea says it is trying to show no hostility towards Pyongyang, calling a return to stability in the communist state in the interests of the region.

President Lee Myung-bak made the comments in a meeting with top lawmakers, Yonhap news agency said.
Seoul is also sending its top nuclear negotiator to Beijing for talks on the situation in North Korea following the death of leader Kim Jong-il.
Meanwhile, North Korean state media continues to report mass grieving.
Mr Kim died on Saturday of a heart attack, state media reported.
The 69-year-old had led North Korea since the death of his father in 1994 and an elaborate personality cult, involving multiple stories of alleged miracles or astonishing deeds, has been built up around him.
On Wednesday state media said more than five million people had already turned out to pay their respects.
Even nature is mourning, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported on Thursday. A snowstorm hit as Mr Kim died and ice on a volcanic lake near his reported birthplace cracked. A crane is also said to have adopted a posture of grief in one northern city.
'Flexibility' State media have called on North Koreans to unite behind his designated heir, youngest son Kim Jong-un, who is being called the "Great Successor".
Observers fear that because the transfer of power from father to son had not been formalised before Mr Kim's death, it could trigger instability. Regional neighbours are keenly watching events in the internationally-isolated nuclear-armed state.
South Korea, which remains technically at war with its northern neighbour following the 1950-153 Korean War, put its military on a state of alert after Mr Kim's death was announced.

North Korea

• Population about 23 million
• One million-strong army thought to be world's fifth largest
• Manufacturing output mainly geared to military's demands
• Daily life strictly controlled by government
• Food shortages, power cuts, poor infrastructure

But it has also scrapped a plan to light controversial Christmas lights that anger North Korea on the border, and offered "sympathies" over the death.

"The measures we have taken so far are basically aimed at showing North Korea we are not hostile toward the North," Yonhap news agency quoted Mr Lee as saying on Thursday.
"An early stabilisation of North Korea's system is in the interests of neighbouring countries," he said. "On future relations with North Korea, there is room for exercising as much flexibility as possible. We will discuss the matter with all political parties."
Ties between the two Koreas have been very tense in recent months, following the sinking of a South Korean warship in March 2010 and the shelling of a border island in November 2010.
North Korea denies a role in the first incident and says Seoul provoked the second.
Relations have also been hit by Mr Lee's refusal to offer aid to Pyongyang without progress on the nuclear issue.
South Korea's nuclear envoy, Lim Sung-nam, is heading to Beijing to discuss how stalled six-nation talks aimed at denuclearising North Korea should be tackled in the wake of Mr Kim's death.
South Korean media have also accused Beijing of failing to communicate with Seoul since the announcement came.

Source BBC

Read more »

Posted in: Asia,Korea,Politics,Society

More Protests in Russia Over Alleged Election Fraud

Opposition supporters hold a rally to protest against violations at the parliamentary elections and the policies conducted by current Russian authorities in St. Petersburg. The sign reads, "Putin, you are the traitor," December 18, 2011.

Thousands marched again Sunday in Moscow and St. Petersburg against alleged fraud in this month's Russian parliamentary elections.

The Communist party organized the Moscow protests while several different parties were behind the St. Petersburg march. But Sunday's protests were much smaller than those held across Russia last week.

Both the opposition and outside observers say there were widespread irregularities and outright fraud in the December 4 election, won by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's ruling United Russia party.

Despite unprecedented public outrage against United Russia, Prime Minister Putin is widely expected to win the March 4 presidential election and swap jobs with current president Dimitry Medvedev.

Mr. Putin was elected president in 2000 and 2004, but Russia's constitution made him ineligible to seek a third consecutive term in 2008.

Last month, Mr. Putin formally accepted his party's nomination to run again for the presidency. The job swap deal has angered many in Russia, who say it would strengthen authoritarian rule and clear the way for Mr. Putin to become Russia's longest-serving leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
Source: VOA

Read more »

Posted in: Russia,Society,violence

Windows 8 to feature image sign-on system

Using Windows 8 devices could involve signing on by tapping, circling or touching images.

The sign-on system will track gestures forming lines, points and circles

Microsoft has revealed details of a login system for the next version of Windows based around pictures a user stores on a touchscreen device.
Only when parts of an image are tapped or touched in the right order will a user be able to access a device.
Experts said it might stop people using weak passwords but could lead to other loopholes that are harder to solve.
Press here Microsoft aired the idea of using images to sign on to a device via a blog written by engineers working on Windows 8 - the next version of the Windows operating system expected to be released in late 2012.
Windows 8 is designed for touchscreen devices such as tablets and the novel sign-on systems makes use of the sensitive displays they are likely to sport.
The familiar process of getting to use a desktop PC or laptop by typing in a password made of up lower and upper case letters as well as numbers was felt to be too "cumbersome" for tablets, wrote Microsoft engineer Zach Pace on the blog.
The replacement system proposed by Microsoft employs a picture chosen by a user from their collection of images on a device.
On this image, users are encouraged to tap on, underline or circle the parts that are important to them. The sequence of gestures, including start and end positions and orientation act as a key to unlock the device.
'Interesting and cute' User-testing suggests that the image-based system can grant access to a portable gadget far faster than was possible through text-based passwords, wrote Mr Pace.
He stressed that the system would work alongside text-based passwords rather than replace them. If a user failed to properly reproduce the correct gestures fives times in a row they would be prompted for the password they set up when they first used the device.
The permutations of taps, touches and circles that could be drawn on a picture was likely to be far higher than those available from text-based passwords, said Prof Alan Woodward from the department of computing at the University of Surrey.
That was especially true, he said, when one considered the limited number of words from which most people picked their passwords.
"The initial calculations show that it is likely to provide a level of security that is at least as strong as a password, and frankly, stronger than most passwords chosen by users," he added.
Graham Cluley, senior security researcher at Sophos, said the research was "interesting and cute" but may introduce other security problems.
It could, he said, make people vulnerable to "shoulder surfing" - a practice better known from cash machines where crooks try to spot a victim's Pin as they tap it into a number pad.
"With normal password entry, what you're doing is asterisked on the screen," said Mr Cluley. "With this gesture input, folks may find it easier to see the movements you are making."
There might be more value in operating systems encouraging people to use stronger passwords by refusing to let them use dictionary words or ones that are easy to crack, he added.
Source : BBC

Read more »

Posted in: Computer,Science

Britain boycotts IMF eurozone rescue scheme

European countries have agreed to provide 150bn euros (£125bn; $194bn) to the International Monetary Fund.

The money could be used to help countries in the eurozone struggling to pay their debts.

Mario Draghi, the head of the ECB, says
"I have no doubts whatsoever" about the strength of the euro

Eurozone countries including Germany, Italy and Spain as well as several outside the eurozone offered support.
But Britain's decision not to take part in a scheme to support the eurozone meant EU finance ministers failed to reach their target sum of 200bn euro.
The British government wants an increase in IMF resources to be part of a broader process involving all G20 nations.
"The UK has always been willing to consider further resources for the IMF, but for its global role and as part of a global agreement," the office of UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said in a statement.
'Lack of solidarity'
BBC Europe correspondent Chris Morris says Britain is insisting that the IMF's role is to support countries not currencies.
But, he adds, some will see this as another example of a lack of solidarity from London, at a time when the eurozone is struggling to emerge from months of economic crisis.
The largest contributers to the fund were Germany and Spain.
Eurozone nations which have already had to accept international bailouts - such as Greece and Ireland - will not take part in the new scheme.
But contributions to the IMF fund have also been pledged by several countries outside the eurozone, including Denmark, Poland, Sweden and the Czech Republic.
News of the agreement came as the European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said he had no doubts that the euro would survive.
But the bank also warned that risks to the eurozone's stability had increased and that, in the worst-case scenario, there could be a return to a global recession.
In its twice-yearly Financial Stability Report it said that the risk of two large banks defaulting within the next year had risen to the highest level in four years.
The ECB also warned that some eurozone banks had become addicted to central-bank funds, and could face "significant challenges".

Source: BBC

Read more »

Posted in: Europea,Society

US, Japan Call for Peaceful Transition in North Korea

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (R) speaks during a meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba (L) at the State Department in Washington, December 19, 2011

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her Japanese counterpart, Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba, on Monday urged a peaceful transition in North Korea following the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. The development has delayed a U.S. decision on whether to provide new food aid to North Korea.

The meeting, held on Foreign Minister Gemba’s first Washington trip since taking office three months ago, was planned long before the announcement from Pyongyang.

But the death of Kim Jong Il dominated the discussion, with Clinton emerging to express hope that the transition underway in North Korea does not lead to regional turmoil.
“The foreign minister and I discussed the evolving situation on the Korean peninsula in light of reports from North Korea’s state-owned media on the death of Kim Jong Il," said Clinton. "We both share a common interest in a peaceful and stable transition in North Korea, as well as in insuring regional peace and stability.”

Clinton did not express condolences to the Pyongyang government but said the United States hopes for better relations with the North Korean people and said the United States remains deeply concerned about their well-being.

Heard through an interpreter, Foreign Minister Gemba stressed the need for close coordination with South Korea and other parties to the Chinese-sponsored six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program.

“We share the view that we should coordinate closely with six-party partners, and are also in agreement that all sides want stability and calmness during this period," said Gemba. "In addition, we also confirmed that we should maintain our close coordination among Japan, the United States and the Republic of Korea [South Korea] on the effort toward denuclearization of North Korea, in particular to ensure concrete actions [are] taken by North Korea.”

The six-party talks, in which North Korea agreed in principle in 2005 to disarm in return for economic and diplomatic benefits, have been stalled since 2008.

But the pace of contacts with Pyongyang has increased in recent months, including talks in Beijing last week between U.S. and North Korean officials on resuming American food aid to Pyongyang.

Recent news reports indicated that the United States was ready to resume food shipments for the first time in several years. But State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland says potentially decisive U.S. consultations on the issue - planned for Monday - were postponed because of the death of the North Korean leader.

“We haven’t yet had those internal discussions. And again, we want to be respectful of the North Korean period of mourning," said Nuland. "We will obviously need to reengage at the right moment. But again, we haven’t made any internal decisions here.”

Nuland indicated that Mr. Kim's death has prompted the Obama administration to put off a decision on whether to dispatch special envoy for North Korea Glyn Davies on another round of bilateral talks with North Korean diplomats.

Davies was in Beijing last week for meetings with Chinese officials on prospects for restarting the nuclear negotiations.

Source VOA

Read more »

Posted in: Asia,Politics,USA

North Koreans mourn Kim Jong-il after 'heart attack'

North Koreans are in mourning after the death of their leader, Kim Jong-il.

People wept openly on the streets of the capital, Pyongyang. State media said he had suffered a heart attack on Saturday, aged 69. He had been unwell.
The official news agency KCNA described one of his sons, Kim Jong-un, as the "great successor" whom North Koreans should unite behind.

The BBC's Lucy Williamson says news of the death has taken people by surprise

Pyongyang's neighbours are on alert fearing instability in the poor and isolated nuclear-armed nation.

"Comrade Kim Jong-il was the great leader of the North Korean people and a close friend of the Chinese people”

Following news of Mr Kim's death, South Korea put its armed forces on high alert and said the country was on a crisis footing. Japan's government convened a special security meeting.

China - North Korea's closest ally and biggest trading partner - expressed shock at the news of his death and pledged to continue making "active contributions to peace and stability on the Korean peninsula and in this region".
After meeting her Japanese counterpart Koichiro Gemba, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she hoped for a stable and peaceful transition in North Korea.
"We reiterate our hope for improved relations with the people of North Korea and remain deeply concerned about their well-being," she said.
North and South Korea are still technically at war, and the US has thousands of troops stationed in South Korea and Japan.
BBC diplomatic correspondent James Robbins says Kim Jong-il's sudden death - before the regime had completed a power transfer to his young son - has led to new uncertainties in an already jittery and heavily armed corner of the world.
Governments around the world share the nervousness of ordinary people who live within missile and artillery range of North Korea's vast arsenal of weapons, both conventional and nuclear, our correspondent says.

Analysis

Aidan Foster-Carter Korea analyst

The death of Kim Jong-il is the ultimate moment of truth for North Korea. This strangest of regimes has survived for 20 years after most forms of communism elsewhere either perished or morphed into something more sensible. So we had best not underestimate its staying power.
Kim Jong-un inherits a poisoned chalice. This untried youth must now run a country both at odds with most of the world and oppressive of its long-suffering people - who may not obey forever, despite the remarkable scenes of publicly orchestrated grief which we are now witnessing.

Meanwhile, the UN General Assembly has overwhelmingly backed a resolution condemning human rights violations in North Korea.

The vote, scheduled before Mr Kim's death was announced, called for an end to "systematic, widespread and grave violations". North Korea rejected the resolution.
Asian stock markets fell after news of Mr Kim's death was announced.
Crying aloud Mr Kim's death was announced in an emotional statement on national television.
The announcer, wearing black, struggled to keep back the tears as she said he had died of physical and mental over-work.
KCNA later reported that he had died of a "severe myocardial infarction along with a heart attack" at 08:30 local time on Saturday (23:30 GMT Friday).
He had been on a train at the time, for one of his "field guidance" tours, KCNA said.

North Korea

• Population about 23 million
• One million-strong army thought to be world's fifth largest
• Manufacturing output mainly geared to military's demands
• All aspects of daily life strictly controlled by government
• Daily food shortages; acute power cuts and poor infrastructure

The state news agency said a funeral would be held in Pyongyang on 28 December and Kim Jong-un would head the funeral committee. A period of national mourning has been declared from 17 to 29 December.

Images from inside the secretive state showed people in the streets of Pyongyang weeping at the news of his death.
Ruling party members in one North Korean county were shown by state TV banging tables and crying out loud, the AFP news agency reports.
"I can't believe it," a party member named as Kang Tae-Ho was quoted as saying. "How can he go like this? What are we supposed to do?"
Another, Hong Sun-Ok, said: "He tried so hard to make our lives much better and he just left like this."
KCNA said millions of North Koreans were "engulfed in indescribable sadness".
It said people were "convulsing with pain and despair" at their loss, but would unite behind his successor Kim Jong-un.
"All party members, military men and the public should faithfully follow the leadership of comrade Kim Jong-un and protect and further strengthen the unified front of the party, military and the public," the news agency said.
Little is known about Kim Jong-un. He was educated in Switzerland, is aged in his late 20s and is believed to be Kim Jong-il's third son - born to Mr Kim's reportedly favourite wife, the late Ko Yong-hui.

Analysis

John Sudworth BBC News, Seoul

Kim Jong-il's death is no real surprise. His public appearances have shown him visibly dwindling in much the way North Korea on his watch has shrivelled to an isolated pariah and a basket-case economy with one of the world's worst human rights records.
On the world stage Kim Jong-il has played a canny game of nuclear brinkmanship.
To the outside world he became a figure of curiosity, intrigue, even fun - the communist tyrant from central casting with his bouffant hairdo, khaki jumpsuits and plaform shoes.
But for his fellow countrymen there was nothing funny about him at all. The fact the announcement came two full days after his death, kept from the prying eyes of numerous intelligence agencies, is itself perhaps an ominous signal; that the secretive, authoritarian status quo he did so much to maintain is likely to prevail.

Kim Jong-un was unveiled as his father's likely successor just over a year ago. Many had expected to see this process further consolidated in 2012.

'Turning point' Kim Jong-il inherited the leadership of North Korea from his father Kim Il-sung.
Shortly after he came to power in 1994, a severe famine caused by ill-judged economic reforms and poor harvests left an estimated two million people dead.
His regime has been harshly criticised for human rights abuses and is internationally isolated because of its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Under Mr Kim's leadership, funds have been channelled to the military and in 2006 North Korea conducted its first nuclear test.
It followed that up with a second one three years later. Multinational talks aimed at disarming North Korea have been deadlocked for months.
He had reportedly been in poor health since suffering a stroke in August 2008.

 Source: BBC

Read more »

Posted in: Korea,Politics,Society

Internet Explorer: Microsoft plans 'silent' updates

From January, Internet Explorer (IE) users will be automatically updated to the latest version of the browser.

Once IE is updated, future changes will be
applied without a user's knowledge

Microsoft said it was starting the project to update millions of machines to improve security online.
Future updates to the browser would be applied without a user's knowledge to help beat scammers catching people out with fake updates.
Those who did not want their browser updated could opt out or uninstall the software, said Microsoft.

"The Web overall is better - and safer - when more people run the most up-to-date browser," wrote Ryan Gavin, Microsoft's IE boss, in a blogpost explaining the plan.

He said the data gathered by Microsoft for its security intelligence reports showed that many cyber criminals targeted old or outdated software when they tried to trick people into installing fake updates.

To beat such scams, Mr Gavin, said that once the latest version of the browser was installed all future updates would arrive silently and be applied without a user getting involved.

Chester Wisniewski, senior security advisor at Sophos, said the plan would aid those who did not see the importance of staying up to date.

"Microsoft has been struggling with browser stragglers for years," he said in a statement.

Demise of IE6

The giant upgrade programme will affect IE users running Windows XP, Vista and 7, and will first be rolled out in Australia and Brazil. Only those Windows users with automatic updates turned on will be enrolled in the programme.

Those using Windows XP will be upgraded to IE8, while those on Vista and 7 get bumped up to IE9. This will probably mean the demise of IE6, a 10-year-old version of the browser that Microsoft has been trying to kill off for a while.

Figures gathered by Microsoft suggest IE6 is used by about 8.3% of people around the world, with the biggest number of users in China, where almost 28% of people remain wedded to it.

Globally, Internet Explorer is still the most popular browser, with more than 52% of people using it, according to net market research firm Net Applications. Mozilla's Firefox and Google's Chrome are battling it out for second place.

Microsoft said it had made tools that would let people avoid or uninstall the more up-to-date versions of the browsers if they wanted to stay with an older copy.
Source BBC

Read more »

Posted in: Computer

Traffic police and funny bans

A  traffic policeman in Hanoi was hit while
attempting to stop a car in July

Dear readers,
This week, we once again discuss a topic that you may see in everyday stories on TuoiTreNews: traffic police.
Last week, the Ho Chi Minh City Police Department issued a rule prohibiting officers in the traffic police force from carrying more than VND 100,000 (US$4.7) while on duty. These regulations are aimed at strengthening supervision by heads of police units over their staff while forming a framework for handling cases in which traffic police officers allegedly take bribes from traffic violators.
Joey Pham wonders if this initiative will really reduce corruption among traffic police.
“The right to own money and to carry cash is a fundamental right of a citizen. The excuse that the restriction is to reduce corruption for me is not strong enough. I can always argue back that such a rule will encourage corruption because having little money on them, officers will have more motive to accept ‘dirty’ money,” reasoned Joey.
This is not the first time Vietnamese police have received such a bizarre ban. Previously they were not allowed to hide behind trees or electricity poles, wear sunglasses or masks, smoke, read books and put their hands into pockets when dealing with traffic-violation cases.
Besides, they also stand a chance of being punished if they stop drivers without issuing tickets. On the other hand, police need to be wary as they may get attacked by thugs, by a young woman or even by their own colleague! Indeed, it is not easy to be a traffic police officer in Vietnam, is it?
As Tim Russell compared Singapore and Vietnam last week, Briton James Allen continued to make an interesting comparison of customer service in London and Ho Chi Minh City. Being used to frosty service in England, James found it quite a shock to receive a smile from a Vietnamese staff during his first days in Ho Chi Minh City.
“Still in England mode, I picked what I needed, put it on the counter and waited for the gruff response that was sure to come. Instead I received my change with a smile and a thank you. Before coming to Vietnam I had heard from many people that Asian hospitality differed somewhat to the UK, but the warmth of the smile, in spite of the late hour and the banality of my purchase was quite a shock,” recalled James.
But grass on the other hill is not always greener and James gradually realized some negative points in this service with a smile. He felt uneasy to be followed every time he entered a shop in Ho Chi Minh City and frustrated when he was not informed that the dish he ordered was not available any more.
“What is more likely is that it is a simple case of culture clash, it does seem that in Vietnam, a smile can compensate for any kind of incident, even those as serious as a bike crash, the same cannot be said for where I’m from. [..] I’ve learned that when it comes to surviving a baffling customer service experience in Vietnam, it pays to leave your expectations at the door, be as direct as possible and take every smile with a pinch of salt,” concluded James.
Despite many cons in Vietnamese customer service, we hope you will not stop exploring more new places where you live.
In response to our challenge to discover the neighborhood last week, Chad Kub from America got out of his house and tried several wrap dishes like banh khot, nem chao or oc buou nhoi thit on Ho Chi Minh City streets.
“Some of the best things about Vietnamese food are the freshness, and the lightness of the dishes. There is no better example of this than the dishes that you get to wrap up with leaves. These dishes usually consist of fatty or fried main item beautiful balanced by crisp fresh lettuce and a slightly citrusy or sour sauce that cuts through the heaviness,” wrote Chad.
As a chef and a tour guide himself, Chad wrote about these delicious street foods with his very true feelings and informative details which may help you understand better about Vietnamese foods. Don’t forget to take a look if you haven’t.
That’s it! Let’s ‘wrap up’ this week’s editorial by this cuisine story.
Just a little reminder to you, our readers, that the festive season is drawing near and we are looking for stories and pictures related to Christmas celebration in Vietnam. It can be your preparations for this year’s Christmas Eve, memorable experiences of your last Christmas, dishes you will make for family on this special day. Feel free to drop us an email with your writing and photos at expat@tuoitre.com.vn.
Have a nice weekend everyone.

Source: tuoitrenews.vn

Read more »

Posted in: Society,Vietnam,violence