My first personal website was hosted by GeoCities back in 1990s I don’t even remember the year but. I was free hosting limited in scripting but good enough on HTML. GeoCities was the place where many a modern-day internet nerd cut his or her teeth.
Now days hosting is fairly cheap and accessible, but was the good old days when I was an student with empty pocket looking to host my website for a presence.
RIP Geocities, goodbye old friend.
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Today I’m sad, besides his controversial life, I may say songs like “Billie Jean” was part of the great things back in 1983. In celebration of the music and memories, here is that magical moment to relive all over again.
Michael Jackson was unquestionably the biggest pop star of the ’80s, and certainly one of the most popular recording artists of all time.
Though Michael Jackson has been known for pretty much anything and everything under the sun besides music for the past 15 years or so, his accomplishments during the ’80s will always remain some of the most impressive in music history.
Please share your thoughts and remembrances of the eternal King of Pop.
Never before the Detroit Big 3 car makers have faced such a big challenge. Their financial condition worsened a lot during this year because of both the malfunction of credit market and the sharp drop in automobile sales. Without government bailout, they are likely to go bankrupt soon and cost millions of jobs in the automotive industry. Even if only one of them collapse, it will drag down countless of suppliers and eventually the other two. To persuade the congress to provide financial bailout, the Big 3 have submitted their rescue plans to Washington DC yesterday. Here below is a summary what they will do:
GM
GM will need US$18 billion loan from the government in order to prevent from bankruptcy. In particular, some $4 billion must be available within this month, showing how alarming its cash reserve level is.
To persuade the congress to accept its request, GM promises the following cost cutting measures:
Ford
The financial condition of Ford is healthier than both GM and Chrysler. It predicts it will have enough cash to survive until the end of next year. While it is seeking a government loan of US$9 billion, it hopes the loan will not be actually used. Ford forecasts its balance sheet will return to black in year 2011 through the following cost cutting measures:
Chrysler
Similar to GM, the Cerberus-owned Chrysler needs money within this month to be safe from bankruptcy. The exact figure is US$7 billion. Besides, it also wants another US$6 billion from the government funding for green vehicles. For cost cut, Chrysler did not give details, only mentioning it will rationalise production, forge partnership with other car makers to share platforms and pay its CEO Bob Nardelli a salary of $1 – yes, the same as Rick Wagoner and Alan Mulally.
If your company look for a cheap yet hardworking CEO, you can look no further than Detroit. Yes, they do sometimes take corporate aircrafts to meetings and vacation, but these smart guys can get you billions of free government money.
US sales slide in November
The US auto market is experiencing the most severe sales decline in recent decades. In November, the total sales for all makers dropped 11 percent compare with October, or 37% compare with a year ago. In particular, GM dropped 41%, Chrysler 47% and Ford 31%. Even the Japanese could not escape from sharp decline – Toyota slid 34%, Honda 32% and Nissan 42%. Hyundai group suffered a 39% drop. Porsche lost 48% of sales, reflecting luxury sports cars are hit heavily by economy. Among the big car makers, only Volkswagen group (including Audi) dropped by less than 30 percent, which was 21%.
GM: -41%
Ford: -31%
Chrysler: -47%
Toyota: -34%
Honda: -32%
Nissan: -42%
Mazda: -31%
Mitsubishi: -35%
Subaru: -8%
Suzuki: -46%
Hyundai group: -39%
VW group: -21%
BMW group: -27%
Mercedes: -38%
Porsche: -48%
German Doctor Cures an HIV Patient With a Bone Marrow Transplant
reporter writes
“HIV is the virus that causes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Until now, HIV has no cure and has led to the deaths of over 25 million people. However, a possible cure has appeared. Dr. Gero Hutter, a brilliant physician in Germany, replaced the bone marrow of an HIV patient with the bone marrow of a donor who has natural immunity to HIV. The new bone marrow in the patient then produced immune-system cells that are immune to HIV. Being unable to hijack any immune cell, the HIV has simply disappeared. The patient has been free of HIV for about 2 years. Some physicians at UCLA have developed a similar therapy and plan to commercialize it.”
The details:
A Doctor, a Mutation and a Potential Cure for AIDS
Barak Obama has been elected president beating Republican nominee John McCain. Great, maybe I was expecting what happened back in 2004 and 2000 with Florida. This time was just without disturbance and you could feel the emotions and hope of the people in Chicago thru the TV screen wishing for democrats back to the White House; awesome.
Obama is the first African-American to be nominated by a major American political party for president. As the 44th president, Obama will move into the Oval Office as leader of a country that is almost certainly in. A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he became the first black person to serve as president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama worked as a community organizer and practiced as a civil rights attorney before serving three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004.
Obama’s challenge: fix economy, save world. “There will be no poor.”
It has been eight years since that fateful Election Night when United States stayed up as long as it could through the dark hours without a president, only to wake up to some of the darkest years in American history.
That’s why the sense of hope that swept Barack Obama into the White House now has been felt around the world, from the celebrations in Kenya to the parties in Europe, Asia, and around America herself.
No president, even with an overwhelming majority in Congress like Obama will have, can ever hope to solve all of this. But progress can be made on all fronts. Indeed, just turning in the right direction on some of them would be a huge success.
On the economy, Obama has a great challenge as voters expect results.
No doubt his speech was soaring and inspiring. But once he has made it to the White House, his actions will be measured far more than his words. This historic election will be a milestone in American politics. But Obama’s real place in history will measured by whether he actually has the chops to reform and rebuild an economy — the largest in the world — gone horribly and irrevocably awry.
this is hilarious, are we still here?
Hello? Tap, tap, tap, this thing on? – Engadget
“It worked! The LHC was turned on this morning and has been shown to have worked. Engineers cheered as the proton particles completed their first circuit of the underground ring which houses the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). (And we’re all still alive too!)”
My god… here the details:
09:49 — Confirmed, the first beam of protons has been fired! It took 48-seconds for the pulse to generate and then a tiny flash of light on a computer screen indicated a successful firing around the first 3-km of the 27-km ring — they will methodically extend the range throughout the day.
10:25 — The beam just completed the full ring (in stages) in less than an hour. Things are going much more quickly than expected. They are about to fire the beam around the complete ring, unimpeded.
First Beam Fired – http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article4722261.ece
Here three news articles about the public reaction to the Large Hadron Collider or LHC.
LHC scientists get death threats
So it’s come to this: Death threats against physicists. About what? The earth-destroying Large Hadron Collider, of course. Such is the angst that the American Nobel prize winning physicist Frank Wilczek of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has even had death threats, said Prof Brian Cox of Manchester University… Read More
LHC and Faith-Based Science
Public reaction to the Large Hadron Collider is so ignorant and brain-dead we need a theory to explain what’s going on. I asked Charles King at Pund-IT for a theory. He offered this: I believe that much of the public reaction to the LHC is grounded in a kind of ignorance that might be called… Read More
Stephen Hawking: LHC vital, absolutely safe
Since the geniuses at CERN have failed to assuage amped-up (if entirely unfounded) fears that the Large Hadron Collider is actually a doomsday machine, they have reached up to the mountain to get Prof. Stephen Hawking himself to address the issue. He appeared on BBC 4, as the Telegraph reports.
Read More
For those new to what the LHC is check out the Large Hadron Rap:
CERN Rap from Will Barras on Vimeo.
There is water ice on Mars within reach of the Mars Phoenix Lander, NASA scientists announced Thursday. Interesting read at Wired Science, read on:
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/06/mars-phoenix-tw.html
“Are you ready to celebrate? Well, get ready: We have ICE!!!!! Yes, ICE, *WATER ICE* on Mars! w00t!!! Best day ever!!” the Mars Phoenix Lander tweeted at about 5:15 pm.
These guys keep celebrating with every success and I’m totally agree with it! keep up the great work NASA!!!
I’m Dominican, and I can tell you this is true “to continue on the path of stability and progress”. PRD was far from any guarantee with their candidate and forget about PRSC party candidate.
The progressive liberal Fernandez was ahead with 53.9 percent of the vote — enough to avoid a runoff — with more than 62 percent of ballots counted, the Central Election Committee announced on Friday.
Social Democrat Vargas was at 40.4 percent, while PRSC party candidate Amable Aristy Castro was in third with 4.63 percent, the committee reported.
And despite isolated incidents of violence, the voting tool place in a climate of order and organization where every person I know told me, that voted without any trouble or wait.
I’m happy, We are happy as we are a developing country. We want continuity.
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