The concern is so big that in the U.S, they have a launched an addiction recovery program to help sufferers of IAD to better manage their life in a more ‘harmonious’ way. You might think this only concern to those who ‘Google’ everyday. Wrong guys!! Internet-based video games falls into this category. The program known as reSTART is meticulously planned over 45 days and it has already received it’s first patient, a 19 year old who cannot deprive himself of World of Warcraft.

So how do you know if you are an IAD sufferer? reSTART has outlined 9 symptoms by which are qualified for admittance:

Have a strong desire to use the Internet

Decreasing or withdrawal of internet leads to symptoms like malaise, relentlessness, lack of concentration and so on.

Increasing usage of Internet results into satisfaction

Difficulty to stop the usage despite you are aware it’s harmful

Unable to control the duration of time of internet use

Social, recreational and other personal interests decreases

Solace is found in using the Internet so as to flee from the outside pressures

Extent of use is denied to friends, teachers or schoolmates

Everyday routines and social functions (academic, workability) are impaired

The treatment? Well basically it cuts off the web and online gaming and focuses more on social skills. The patients are constantly followed by a recreation coach, a therapist, exercise and yoga instructors and more. Besides each patient have a schedule to follow which includes physical exercises (sports and fitness), chores, vocational training, a 3 hour back to nature period, a regular life quest and of course he/she is given a personal time everyday from 8.30 PM to 10.00 PM after which the lights are out!

Of course, such program does not come cheap!! You’ll have to pay a hefty $14,500 to get admitted. Considering what it offers it’s worth it’s price but it should be the last resort to cure yourself. In many cases Internet addiction is self corrective. It has been proven that heavy Internet users temporary endures this illness as gradually they decrease their time on the computer. The point it’s up to you guys how you use it!

I hope it’s not too late for you. Feel free to voice out your opinions about it!!

This article comes from GeekScribes

Internet Addiction – A Serious Crisis!

1. thembb.com



2. thembb.blogspot.com



This definitely make me hint at account takeover. Anyone else noticed this?

I tried a whois on the domain name and got the nameservers:

NS1.SEOBUMMER.COM

NS2.SEOBUMMER.COM

Must be a weak password or what?

The lesson, don’t use weak password and  change your password frequently

This article comes from GeekScribes

The Mauritian Blog Brethren – The Story Behind?

Like the rest of the world (excluding the terrorists), I’m appalled by the Mumbai attacks. It’s simply inconceivable how a group of terrorists could wreak such havoc! My sympathies to the people who have lost loved ones in those attacks.

However, the point of this article is not to debate about the attacks. It’s not fitting for me to comment on such tragic events. What I would like to point out however, is the fantastic coverage of the events that NDTV (New Delhi Television Limited) has provided, which will put our national broadcaster, MBC, to shame. I usually don’t talk about politics on Geekscribes since I’m not a fan of the subject, but this is going to be a rare exception.

How I managed to know about NDTV? MBC was ripping redirecting the broadcast from India to the country yesterday, or so I think. This allowed me to follow the events in live, and I must say, flooded with details and information.

• NDTV listed the names of the hostages rescued and at which hospital victims wereThis is impressive. They managed to get a list of rescued hostages and broadcast them to others with the hope that they might find in there, their families and friends. A very good move I must say, and it will definitely help others who are unable to communicate with the people involved there. This list was kept on screen at any point in time as a scroller. This is the news people want to know, and I am sure, if it was the MBC covering those events, we’d just be having images and commentary.
• NDTV had the courage of cutting a politician mid-speechIn my opinion, this is a “feat” that the MBC will never be able to achieve. I don’t know who the politician were, but here is how it went: There was a reporter talking live from in front of the Taj hotel, interviewing a person whose family member was in there. Then, the studio reporter interrupted the guy because of a politician was talking live. After a while, the studio reporter switched back to the Taj hotel guy and said something along those lines: “We have no time to debate politics in this situation. Unfortunately, this is what our politicians usually do. We prefer to switch back to the Taj Hotel” and the image swapped back.This is just awesome! Something like this is never going to happen in Mauritius! If this happened, the reporters would probably be fired the next day, for “daring” to interrupt a “very important” politician! But in times like these, politics is not what is most needed, and NDTV did just the right thing.
• NDTV presenter criticizes politiciansI kept the best for last. This definitely will NEVER happen in Mauritius. At some point in the coverage, an NDTV presenter made some comments after a series of videos depicting the day’s events, and the people that lost their lives in trying to save others’. Those comments were like this: “The events of today remind us that Indians now don’t care what PM is in power or the petty politics. The mood can be summarized in simple words: Enough is Enough! Today, [reporter names 2 politicians] promised they would go together to Mumbai. Finally, they went separately. Even on a day like this, they were unable to unite! The people of India needs them united, and they can’t go to Mumbai together. [comment continues]“This is what I call unbiased news! And that’s how things should be done. I can agree that MBC is government-controlled, even if it tends to call itself “independent”. But if you are the national broadcaster, it is your duty to bring unbiased news to the people, and make criticism where needed.

NDTV showed me what professionalism is today. Their reporters were always on the scene, sometimes even in the line of fire. In short, they made a fantastic coverage of the events, and I am sure are still doing a fine job even now. They were helpful in their reports, providing lists and interviews where possible. They covered politicians and military personnel to try to gain more information. What’s more? As soon as a new piece of information became available, it was immediately presented on screen in the “Just In” section at the bottom of the screen.

I can only hail their performance today. I hope the MBC and other broadcasters in Mauritius can learn from them, and provide us with better news, instead of just coverage of what our politicians did, or what they inaugurated. Who cares about those anyways? I doubt any Mauritian loves to see politicians’ faces every evening on TV after they leave a tiring day’s job. No we don’t. And that’s just what the MBC feeds us everyday.

Hell, the other day, the lady even read the WHOLE sympathy message the PM sent to India. Did we really need to know the full contents? At other times, we get a 20 mins coverage of our PM’s speech in a 30 mins news. Talk about professionalism!

As if it was not enough, now the JT is being re-broadcasted after 23h for us to have another look at our lovable politicians’ faces again, if ever we missed them.

Let’s hear your views now. What do you think about MBC? What can they do to improve? Can they even improve?? And what about the Mumbai attacks? Do you have any relatives or close friends there? Any news?

This article comes from GeekScribes

What MBC needs to learn from NDTV

A number of recent events occurring over the Internet prompted me to write this article. What were these events about? Well, if you want to know, they are about privacy decreasing over the Internet. Most users think that while they are online, they are nameless and faceless; One among the millions or billions of users and that they can do pretty much what they want.

Guess again buddy! In fact, I’d go as far as to say you are never anonymous over the Internet. Why? There is always your IP address. Hide it via a proxy you say? Your ISP still has your record, and if ever your proxy is not totally reliable, then you could easily be found.

I’ll be talking about the decreasing levels of privacy. “The Internet is an unregulated network with free-flow of Information”, or so the definition says. Is it really true? Not according to me. Do you consider bandwidth regulation schemes, commonly known as “bandwidth capping” to be unregulated flow of information?

You are not allowed to use some services at some times of the day, by some ISPs. That’s a lot of some’s, but it’s there. P2P throttling is becoming increasingly common among ISPs who are seeing their bandwidth being swamped with P2P traffic. This violates the basic philosophy of a free-flow of information, right?

But let’s see what the Japanese have to say when it comes to how they use the Internet.

We know that the Japanese are very good when it comes to high-speed Internet, with something like 100Mbps available at around $45 per month. We also know that Fair-Usage Policies were introduced by Orange in Mauritius, giving you a download-capping of around 10GB a month, or so we guessed. Guess what the Japan ISP, NTT did. They implemented an upload-capping of (!!) 30GB per day! Downloads, of course, are still unlimited. Ok… *shocked* Read more here.

Now for the decreasing privacy topic. Starting with the most recent now, let’s see flagrant cases of what I’d call “invasion of privacy” but which authorities seem to consider “normal”. You be the judge.

In a recent case, Viacom sued Google/Youtube because of illegal videos being uploaded to their servers. By illegal, I mean things like music clips and the similar. Media that are copyrighted, but were nevertheless uploaded. Viacom was asking for quite a few things, namely the legendary Google/Youtube searching algorithm, the new VideoID algorithms, a database of every video ever deleted from Youtube for whatsoever reason, a video of every video ever hosted/viewed on Youtube and finally, private videos. For your information, VideoID is Youtube’s way of filtering copyrighted content by matching uploaded videos to a database of copyrighted videos, and singling out suspect ones for human intervention.

Fortunately for Google, they will not have to hand their algorithms which are considered to be trade-secrets. BUT! They will have to hand our the deleted videos and the database of hosted/viewed videos. This is bad for you, particularly the last one. That database contains IP addresses of hosters and viewers alike (or so it seems). That’s around 12TB of personally-identifiable information (they can find your location and your details using this information) now laying in the hands of Viacom in the form of logs. I bet folks who have been uploading a lot of Viacom’s stuff will be getting infringement letters soon. That’s a big punch in the face of privacy huh? A good news is that the private videos will not be handed over.

You can read more about the above case at ArsTechica. Again, ArsTechnica also has this interesting article about BPI and Virgin sending infringement letters to “educate” people about illegal downloading. How do they know these people were downloading illegal stuff? Well, probably by monitoring them.

On Wednesday evening the Swedish parliament voted yes to a bill that allows FRA, National Defense Radio Agency, to monitor all phone traffic and e-mail traffic in the name of national security. Unlike the police, FRA can listen in on anyone for any purpose without a court order, bringing the level of personal integrity in Sweden to an all-time-low.

As you may guess, there was widespread protest there by the public and the notorious torrent tracker, Pirate Bay. I doubt there will be any changes though. Let’s wait and see.

Edit: Oh, by the way, the Americans will be doing it too shortly.

Without traffic management, especially of P2P, the idea is that prices would either go up or congestion might reach truly terrible new heights, and Caputo believes that most users would rather just throttle P2P; let it work, but slowly and in the background, so that ISPs don’t need to make expensive infrastructure improvements and everyone can continue eating at the buffet for $30 or $40 a month. We might also see tiers emerge that allow P2P users free rein for, say $70 a month, while non-P2P users could keep paying lower prices. Caputo insists, “it’s going to be laughable in the next two or three years that people used to say all packets should be treated equally.”

Of course, it’s probably no accident that Caputo’s vision of a tiered Internet where throttlers are the good guys just happens to need his products in every network. And while his vision has a compelling logic too it, it’s a logic that only makes sense in a truly competitive environment where ISPs can’t simply install such tools as a way to artificially hike per-bit prices and pick “winners and losers” on the ‘Net.

This again comes to regulation of information over the Internet, controlled by Sandvine-created products. But, do you really think that “most users would rather just throttle P2P”? I don’t know, but I’m not sure I’d want my traffic being capped without my knowledge, or even seeing my traffic being monitored. Can’t blame the CEO who is only marketing his products. Also, check out this article, about the state of broadband market in the U.S. which also suggesting that a state of “market saturation” is going to come soon.

This article comes from GeekScribes

The end of privacy on the Internet?

However, most of the digital pics you will shoot will either stay on the memory card or the internal memory of the camera, or they will be dumped somewhere on your hard disk and get lost among your clutter files. So? I came up with some ideas to put my pictures to better use, and share them with you. Here’s my top #5 ideas:

#5: Organize them!

You won’t be able to fully appreciate your pictures if they are not well organized, well-renamed and tagged. My favourite software for basic image manipulation and organization is the great XnView. It’s capabilities are just awesome. It handles many (MANY!) image formats, from JPGs to PSDs. You can also perform editing and manipulation tasks directly from XnView, like adjust brightness, change colour, remove red-eyes and the regular stuff. It comes with a “browser” to easily see pictures as thumbnails. It also comes in a portable version if you want it. Trust me, it’s one great picture manager and editor. IrfanView is also great, and it’s pretty well known. I still prefer’s XnView’s interface though. For Renaming purposes, make use of ReNamer.

If you want something very eye-pleasing, but at a big file size, check out Magix Photo Manager.

XnView

#4: Wallpaper them for all to see.

Since you have already shot your pictures, why not display them on your desktop for you to browse through at your own pace, and show them to people? I know loads of people set family pictures, or pictures of loved ones as wallpapers. You might even display your creative shots. Whatever you want.

To simplify the process, you might consider an auto wallpaper-changer such as Wallpaper Master. What this program does is that it changes your wallpaper automatically, taking its pictures from folders you define. You can define the duration for the change (like every hour or day), and other settings. It’s freeware. An alternative software, with same functions, might be this: Automatic Wallpaper Changer. Your choice.

Automatic Wallpaper Changer

#3: Print them

This is quite obvious right? You can actually print your pictures if you want. But personally, I think 1 picture per page is kind of a waste. Since I love using XnView, I use it to create a strip of images. Usually, I pair pictures I want to print. In XnView, under Tools menu, there is an option called “Create Strip of Images“. Basically, you just add your pictures there, choose the alignment, and click Ok. A new image is created with all the pictures you selected in it. Then, you can just File – Print it as you would normally.

Windows Vista (and XP too I think) also include a similar feature. Just select all your images, right-click them, and select Print. On the column on the left, you will find one of the options, that allows you to put 2 or more pictures per page. Then proceed normally for printing.

I would advise you to use gloss paper and a good printer for best results. Photo paper is available from specialist photo stores, or nowadays, in your supermarket. Printers nowadays also include settings for photo print and similar. Give those a try for best results. You will need to have the proper drivers installed for your printer though.

#2: Polish them

Most image editors nowadays will include settings to alter brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, lighting and some other things. Well, you can use those tools to enhance your pictures. Generally, some flashes cause red-eyes effect. Use your image editor to remove those. XnView and IrfanView both include tools for this task. You will also find that adjusting brightness and contrast is necessary sometimes. Try experimenting on some pictures. For example, try increasing the contrast of beach pictures, and lowering brightness and gamma.

For other pictures, you will have to adjust the hue/saturation to remove color artifacts that some digital cameras tend to put on pictures. Like a ghostly blue hue. This can be corrected with hue/saturation controls. Sometimes, color balance can be useful too.

I also resize my pictures. Personally, I rarely print pictures. I keep them on my PC and view them as slide-shows. If you are like me, you can resize and optimize pictures so that they take less storage space. For this task, you will need Farstone Photo Resizer. When resizing, you might want to consider “Optimize Huffman Table” and the JPG quality if ever you are using JPG files. I also decrease the resolution of my pictures to 50% so that they are more manageable and eat less storage space.

Farstone Photo Resizer

XnView and IrfanView also include resizing facilities, but they are a tad more difficult to use. For XnView, you will need to use the Batch Conversion feature.

#1: Share them

This is one of the best things you can do with your shoots. Show them to the world. You might want to consider specialist sites such as the very well-known Flickr, or the DeviantArt community (Photography Section). Consider DeviantArt if you shoot specially great photos, and stock-photos. Pictures from your travels, scenery and other good pictures are highly appreciated on Flickr and DeviantArt.

If you want to make some money, you could try ShutterStock or similar stock-photo sites. If not, give them to EveryStockPhoto or Sxc.hu for reputation-only. Only if you shoot stock-photos, of stuff like moss, cans and related. Posting pictures of your family on stock-photo sites is generally not a good idea. Or sensibly, not a good idea at all!

For family albums, try Google’s Picasa, Photobucket or other specialist album sites that offer Private albums that only you and selected people can view. If you are crafty, you could try hosting your own private album with some PHP scripts, but that’s another story.

To pass them to friends, I’d advise you to use the SlideShow feature of your image editor. For XnView, it’s Tools – Slideshow. Add your pictures. Then use the Create EXE/SCR button. That’s it! You now have an executable file with all your pictures to pass around. People just open the file, and the pictures show as a slide-show, without requiring an image viewer. It’s easier than sending a whole archive of individual pictures. They can even use your pictures as a screensaver, if you save it as an SCR file.

That’s all folks. I hope you can make better use of your digital snapshots after reading this. If you got any more ideas, post your comments. I might add them here (and you get the credits )!

This article comes from GeekScribes

Do more with your digital pictures