Wednesday, January 15, 2014

!!!!!!!!

Why is the media so insensitive?

Everyone is commenting outrageously here and there, about how the California firefighters and sheriffs were wrong, or how the girls might have been alive, about how it wasn't really their fault... etc. Picking people to blame, picking scapegoats. But the truth is, why did the media have to bring this up now? The families are still mourning. The truth should be told, yes. But all people are going to do is mull over who is right and who is wrong, what should be done, what shouldn't, etc. Blaming. The girl is already dead. Her life on earth, at least, is done. So what now? All we can do is learn from this incident. I don't want to talk about whether her family should sure the firefighters, or not, or whatever it is. But whatever happens now, whatever blame is put on now, won't change the fate of the poor girl. Why can't we take a moment to remember, or respect her life? Sure, changes should be made and this incident will definitely serve as a caution and learning experience for future emergencies. But now....

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/01/15/us/asiana-crash-new-video/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Monday, November 26, 2012

Monday, June 6, 2011

5.Apple unveils 'iCloud' storage, new operating systems

By John D. Sutter and Mark Milian, CNN
June 6, 2011 -- Updated 2232 GMT (0632 HKT)

San Francisco (CNN) -- Apple's Steve Jobs on Monday announced a new service called "iCloud," which lets Apple product owners store documents and music on the Internet instead of on their own computer hard drives or mobile phones.

iCloud expands on the trend of cloud computing, which refers to the idea that computer users are storing more of their information "in the cloud" of the Internet rather than on their own storage drives.

All of a person's Apple devices -- iPhone, iPads and Mac computers -- sync wirelessly with Apple's iCloud, giving users access to their documents, photos, apps, calendars and e-mails from any location, not just on a specific gadget.

"We think this is going to be pretty big," said Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, who has been on medical leave since January.

But the service does have some limits.

iCloud stores photos for up to 30 days, and mobile devices store the most recent 1,000 photos. Users can store only 5 gigabytes of documents, which is more than some competitors allow. And in order to sync music that wasn't purchased from Apple's iTunes store, users must pay Apple a fee of $25 per year.

All iCloud services except that music add-on are free, Jobs said.

"This is the first time we've seen this in the music industry," he said.

Consumers can use the iTunes portion of iCloud now, but only if they have iOS version 4.3. The rest of the features will be available to everyone in the fall.

The service replaces an old Apple product called MobileMe, which cost $99 per year. Daily back-ups on iCloud happen automatically in the background when a device is connected to the Internet over Wi-Fi, the company said.

Big tech players like Amazon and Google, as well as smaller companies like Dropbox, already operate cloud storage services with various features.

Amazon created a stir in March when it announced a cloud music player.

Apple typically uses its Worldwide Developers Conference or WWDC, as the event is called in tech circles, to announce a new version on the popular iPhone.

But not this year.

"If the hardware is the brain ... of our products, the software is their soul. And today, we are going to talk about software," Jobs said before a packed audience, wearing his standard uniform of a black mock turtleneck and jeans.

Analysts expect a new iPhone in September.

In addition to iCloud, the company on Monday announced new versions of its operating systems.

Mac OS X Lion, the company's new operating system for laptop and desktop computers, will be available next month for $30, the company said.

That operating system features new "gestures" that make computers work much more like tablets and touch-screen mobile phones.

"If anyone was doubting that iOS and OS X are converging, the use of the trackpad for gestures should convince you. It's incredibly tablet-like. But I wonder how much getting used to it'll take?" Gizmodo wrote on its live blog of the event, which started at 1 p.m. ET.

A new version of Apple's mobile operating system -- called iOS 5, which is due out in the fall -- introduces a system of alerts for iPhones and iPads. A "Notification Center" organizes alerts by app, and these alerts pop up at the top of the screen where they can be more easily ignored. Currently, these alerts show up in the center of the screen and interrupt users.

The mobile operating system also integrates with Twitter, allowing users to tweet photos from within the Camera and Maps apps.

"We want to make it easier for all of our customers to use Twitter," Apple's Scott Forstall said at the event in San Francisco.

A new built-in app called Reminders lets users create to-do lists, and an update to the iPhone and iPad e-mail system will let people create messages in bold or italics, as well as encrypt the messages they send from mobile devices.

The new mobile operating system will also debut a new app called iMessage. With it, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad users will be able to send text, photo and video messages to each other without having to pay the cell-carrier fees associated with texting.

Research in Motion has a similar feature called BlackBerry Messenger, which is quite popular among owners of those phones. App developers have been selling similar software for iOS and other platforms, and those will likely continue to be popular because they allow, say, an iPhone user to contact an Android phone.

An update to the Camera app lets people take photos by pressing the volume-up button on the side of the iPad or iPhone.

The new Camera app also lets users edit photos on the fly, simulating features already available from many third-party app developers.

iOS updates will be available for the first time "over the air," meaning users won't have to sync their devices with desktop computers to get new software.

Users can also sync phones with iTunes over Wi-Fi.

4.Takeshi Kanno: What the world needs

Takeshi Kanno is selected as 2011 Time 100.

He always knew he would save lives in his line of work — but never as many at one time as he did on March 11. The 31-year-old doctor was on duty at the Shizugawa public hospital in the Japanese town of Minami Sanriku when he heard the tsunami alert. He immediately began moving patients to the highest floor, helping dozens of people in the short window between the 9.0-magnitude quake and the deadly wave. When the wall of water arrived, Kanno watched it swallow the street in three minutes, taking the patients he couldn't move with it. "We went downstairs, and everyone was gone," he says.

Over the next two days, Kanno refused to leave those he'd helped survive. When evacuation helicopters arrived, he waited until the last of his patients had gone before he too left. Three days after the quake, he at last made it back to his wife, just hours before the birth of their second child, a boy they named Rei. The name evokes two meanings: in English, a beam of light; in Chinese and Japanese, the wisdom to overcome hardship.

Assistam.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BewknNW2b8Y&feature=player_embedded


Sunday, April 24, 2011

100 most influential artists according to Time

Rain (bi) is considered one of the most influential artist!

  • Joseph Stiglitz
  • Reed Hastings
  • Amy Poehler
  • Geoffrey Canada
  • Mark Zuckerberg
  • Peter Vesterbacka
  • Angela Merkel
  • Julian Assange
  • Ron Bruder
  • Lamido Sanusi
  • Colin Firth
  • Amy Chua
  • Joe Biden
  • Jennifer Egan
  • Kim Clijsters
  • Ahmed Shuja Pasha
  • Aung San Suu Kyi
  • Cory Booker
  • Gabrielle Giffords
  • Katsunobu Sakurai
  • Michelle Obama
  • Paul Ryan
  • Ai Weiwei
  • Rob Bell
  • Fathi Terbil
  • Dilma Rousseff
  • Tom Ford
  • Liang Guanglie
  • Sue Savage-Rumbaugh
  • Takeshi Kanno
  • Nicolas Sarkozy
  • Michele Bachmann
  • Saad Mohseni
  • Chris Christie
  • Matthew Weiner
  • Lisa Jackson
  • Jean-Claude Trichet
  • Justin Bieber
  • Prince William and Kate Middleton
  • Joe Scarborough
  • Blake Lively
  • Hillary Clinton
  • Muqtada al-Sadr
  • Anwar al-Awlaki
  • Kim Jong Un
  • Saif al-Islam Gaddafi
  • Hassan Nasrallah
  • Nathan Wolfe
  • Oprah Winfrey
  • Sergio Marchionne
  • Mahendra Singh Dhoni
  • Felisa Wolfe-Simon
  • Esther Duflo
  • Rain
  • Larry Page
  • Mia Wasikowska
  • David Cameron
  • John Lasseter
  • Maria Bashir
  • Mukesh Ambani
  • Chris Colfer
  • Major General Margaret Woodward
  • Bruno Mars
  • David and Charles Koch
  • Hung Huang
  • General David Petraeus
  • Matt Damon and Gary White
  • Cecile Richards
  • George R.R. Martin
  • Marine Le Pen
  • Grant Achatz
  • Feisal Abdul Rauf
  • El Général
  • Jamie Dimon
  • Heidi Murkoff
  • Sting
  • Jonathan Franzen
  • V.S. Ramachandran
  • Michelle Rhee
  • Mark Wahlberg
  • Rebecca Eaton
  • Xi Jinping
  • Kathy Giusti
  • Arianna Huffington
  • Barack Obama
  • Lionel Messi
  • Azim Premji
  • Aruna Roy
  • Ray Chambers
  • Scott Rudin
  • John Boehner
  • Derrick Rossi
  • Hu Shuli
  • Benjamin Netanyahu
  • Ayman Mohyeldin
  • Charles Chao
  • Bineta Diop
  • Dharma Master Cheng Yen
  • Patti Smith


  • Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,2066367,00.html#ixzz1KUoTqeto

    Wednesday, April 20, 2011

    Human Reasoning;

    I feel discouraged to post in English. After all, I did post this in my blog already, but I wanted to get some feedback from you guys. So here it is.

    Hoje na aula de Inglês, a nossa professora nos deu um texto para ler. Escrito por uma pessoa famosa, a qual o nome me escapa a memória, o texto possuía uma ideia interessante: "Como é bom que nós, humanos, somos dotados de raciocínio, de razão, para que possamos criar desculpas para as mais variadas situações!"
    Não consegui entender, realmente, se ele estava sendo sarcástico quanto à essa ideia, mas essa frase me fez pensar por um bom tempo.
    Nós, humanos, temos o dom da razão, o dom do raciocínio. Podemos usar nossas experiências, junto com o que sabemos e com o que se é esperado de uma situação, para raciocinarmos de maneiras diferentes e únicas. Usamos nosso raciocínio em muitos aspectos da nossa vida, seja para "prever" uma reação, para mudar o rumo de uma experiência científica, ou até para influenciarmos os ideais e as ideias de uma pessoa.
    A questão é: até que ponto podemos confiar no nosso raciocínio? Quando que nossas ideias e experiências mudam nosso raciocínio ao ponto de impedir que nós consigamos realmente ver a situação que está à nossa frente?

    O raciocínio humano, a razão humana, está longe de perfeita, está longe de ser impecável. Nosso raciocínio, diferente do nosso instinto, é influenciado pelas pelos nossas ideias, nossos ideais, as nossas experiências e às coisas que nos foram expostas. Influenciada pela nossa predisposição e pelo o que sabemos, o nosso raciocínio se limita ao presente e ao futuro próximo. Tentamos determinar o que parece ser melhor em cada situação baseado nas nossas experiências passadas, no que nos foi informado no presente e os efeitos da nossa escolha no futuro. Não somos seres imparciais. Não importa o quanto tentemos, a nossa imparcialidade será sempre influenciada pelas emoções e pela razão, deixando de ser um pensamento, um julgamento imparcial, mas direcionado ao que parece mais certo.

    Será que sempre podemos confiar no nosso raciocínio?
    Vejamos um exemplo: suponhamos que Marco é um médico. Um de seus pacientes, Felipe, é um doente terminal, com apenas duas semanas de vida. Felipe está em estado crítico: seus órgãos já não funcionam por eles mesmo e ele está em dor constante. Com um tratamento extra, talvez dê para prolongar a vida de Felipe por mais duas semanas. A família de Felipe decide que a melhor escolha é optar pela eutanásia - acabar com tudo. Embora Marco seja contra a eutanásia, ele entende que Felipe está em dor. Ele entende que é difícil para a família ver Felipe em tanta dor e sofrimento. Ele entende que este é o desejo de Felipe. Aplica a dose de sonífero que, finalmente, faz com que Felipe caia graciosamente nos braços de Morfeu para sempre.

    Semanas depois, Marco descobre que a doença terminal de Felipe poderia ser curada por um novo tratamento recentemente descoberto. Se Marco tivesse optado por prolongar a vida de Felipe por mais duas semanas, ele teria sido curado, e poderia viver uma vida feliz sem consequências desse novo tratamento. Porém, a cura foi descoberta uma semana após a morte de Felipe.

    É realmente a nossa culpa? Não podemos enxergar além do futuro próximo. Não podemos ver ou prever o que vai ser descoberto nas próximas semanas. Mas, nesse exemplo, a informação que Marco tinha, junto com a dor de Felipe e de sua família, influenciou esse raciocínio: é melhor acabar logo com isso. Melhor acabar com a dor.
    Quando perdemos a esperança, o raciocínio entra em seu lugar. O raciocínio, ao contrário da esperança, analisa todas as opções possíveis em um período limitado de tempo. O raciocínio deixa de lado as opções que dependem de sorte, que dependem do tempo; opta por aquilo que tem consequências concretas, que são imagináveis.

    Devemos, então, nos despir do raciocínio? Creio que não. Deixar de lado o nosso raciocínio seria deixar de lado nossa mente - aquilo que nos faz humanos. Devemos, porém, não depender apenas do raciocínio para fazermos escolhas. Devemos sempre ter um pouco de esperança no que pode acontecer. Nada impede de que aquilo aconteça.