Tech Suki

About time..

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-a-morally-bankrupt-dictatorship-built-by-slave-labour-1828754.html

http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com/2009/05/04/human-rights-quote-120-modern-slavery-in-dubai/

Dubai is finally financially bankrupt – but it has been morally bankrupt all along. The idea that Dubai is an oasis of freedom on the Arabian peninsular is one of the great lies of our time.

there is a dictatorship built by slaves.

The people who really built the city can be seen in long chain-gangs by the side of the road, or toiling all day at the top of the tallest buildings in the world, in heat that Westerners are told not to stay in for more than 10 minutes. They were conned into coming, and trapped into staying.

In their home country – Bangladesh or the Philippines or India – these workers are told they can earn a fortune in Dubai if they pay a large upfront fee. When they arrive, their passports are taken from them, and they are told their wages are a tenth of the rate they were promised.

They end up working in extremely dangerous conditions for years, just to pay back their initial debt. They are ringed-off in filthy tent-cities outside Dubai, where they sleep in weeping heat, next to open sewage. They have no way to go home. And if they try to strike for better conditions, they are beaten by the police.

Every evening, the hundreds of thousands of young men who build Dubai are bussed from their sites to a vast concrete wasteland an hour out of town, where they are quarantined away. Until a few years ago they were shuttled back and forth on cattle trucks, but the expats complained this was unsightly, so now they are shunted on small metal buses that function like greenhouses in the desert heat. They sweat like sponges being slowly wrung out.

“Big Breasted Women More Intelligent” | Sankaku Complex.

Research suggests that women with larger breasts are more intelligent than their less well endowed counterparts, with the larger breasted women studied having an I.Q. some 10 points in excess of those with smaller breasts.

Starcraft Course opened for College – earn credits.

Students in UC – Berkeley can take up StarCraft studies for college credits.

Ananova – University opens porn course .

A university in Taiwan has opened a course to teach students how to appreciate and analyse porn movies.

Internet searches stimulate brain more than books • The Register.

Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles have found that searching the web triggers centers in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning in middle-aged and older adults. But while web browsing may spark more neurons than mere book-reading, the study says, this only occurs in those with previous Internet experience.

New attack cracks common Wi-Fi encryption in a minute – Network World.

Computer scientists in Japan say they’ve developed a way to break the WPA encryption system used in wireless routers in about one minute.

The attack gives hackers a way to read encrypted traffic sent between computers and certain types of routers that use the WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) encryption system. The attack was developed by Toshihiro Ohigashi of Hiroshima University and Masakatu Morii of Kobe University, who plan to discuss further details at a technical conference set for Sept. 25 in Hiroshima.

Inside Google Books: Download Over a Million Public Domain Books from Google Books in the Open EPUB Format.

To get started, just find any public domain book on Google Books and click on the Download button in the toolbar.

DailyTech – Microsoft Apologizes for Photoshopping Black Man out of Advertisment.

Japanese Women Demand Rich Husbands | Sankaku Complex.

Another survey looked at the ideal annual income Japanese women sought in a man; the most popular answers were “over $90,000” with 22.8%, and “over $70,000” again with 22.8%. 19.3% were seeking over an income of $130,000 or more.

BBC NEWS | Programmes | Click | Snail mail gets net speed boost.

For 14 euros (£12) a month, letters are redirected to a secret location in Zurich where the envelopes are scanned and an image is e-mailed out to customers.

They can then decide whether letters should be opened and scanned by vetted personnel sworn to secrecy, or simply shredded.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Legal case against God dismissed.

A US judge has thrown out a case against God, ruling that because the defendant has no address, legal papers cannot be served.

He sought a permanent injunction to prevent the “death, destruction and terrorisation” caused by God.

“Given that this court finds that there can never be service effectuated on the named defendant this action will be dismissed with prejudice,” Judge Polk wrote in his ruling.

Mr Chambers sued God last year. He said God had threatened him and the people of Nebraska and had inflicted “widespread death, destruction and terrorisation of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants”.

The court, Mr Chambers said, had acknowledged the existence of God and “a consequence of that acknowledgement is a recognition of God’s omniscience”.

“Since God knows everything,” he reasoned, “God has notice of this lawsuit.”

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Antarctic glacier ‘thinning fast’.

One of the largest glaciers in Antarctica is thinning four times faster than it was 10 years ago, according to research seen by the BBC.

A study of satellite measurements of Pine Island glacier in west Antarctica reveals the surface of the ice is now dropping at a rate of up to 16m a year.

Since 1994, the glacier has lowered by as much as 90m, which has serious implications for sea-level rise.

Calculations based on the rate of melting 15 years ago had suggested the glacier would last for 600 years. But the new data points to a lifespan for the vast ice stream of only another 100 years.

The rate of loss is fastest in the centre of the glacier and the concern is that if the process continues, the glacier may break up and start to affect the ice sheet further inland.

One of the authors, Professor Andrew Shepherd of Leeds University, said that the melting from the centre of the glacier would add about 3cm to global sea level.

Topic: Seducing a sister: the breach – AnonTalk BBS.

Cool story @ Anontalk, check it out

Follow-up http://www.anontalk.com/topic/19950

BBC NEWS | Americas | Praying man let his daughter die.

A US jury has found a man guilty of killing his sick 11-year-old daughter by praying for her recovery rather than seeking medical care.

The man, Dale Neumann, told a court in the state of Wisconsin he believed God could heal his daughter.

She died of a treatable disease.

During the trial, medical experts told the court that Neumann’s daughter could have survived if she had received treatment, including insulin and fluids, before she stopped breathing.

On Thursday Neumann, who is 47 and studied in the past to be a Pentecostal minister, said he thought God would heal his daughter.

“If I go to the doctor, I am putting the doctor before God,” he said. “I am not believing what he said he would do.”

Neumann’s lawyer said he had been convinced that his “faith healing” was working, and that he had committed no crime.

BBC NEWS | Europe | Catholic bank owned pill shares.

A Roman Catholic bank in Germany has apologised after admitting it bought stocks in defence, tobacco and birth control companies.

Der Spiegel newspaper discovered the bank had invested 580,000 euros (£495,310, $826,674) in British arms company BAE Systems.

It also invested 160,000 euros in American birth control pill maker Wyeth and 870,000 euros in tobacco companies.

The bank apologised for behaviour “not in keeping with ethical standards”.

Pax Bank has previously advertised ethical investment funds, specifically claiming to avoid arms and tobacco companies along with organisations that do not adhere to Catholic beliefs.

The Catholic Church has historically condemned the use of contraception, for breaking the link between sex and procreation – a view emphatically upheld by current Pope Benedict XVI.

In the past he has called birth control a “grave sin”.