Sony Ericsson $300,000 phone
Voice Internet Phone Network (VIPN) is commissioning five “Sony Ericsson Black Diamond” phones.
There are only some renders of this phone, and are supposed to illustrate what kind of crazy features this phone will have. Among them: 400MHz XScale PXA225 400MHz processor, WiFi, SD memory, 4 megapixel camera, SIP/VoIP support, Windows Mobile 5.0.
Well the specs are all what expects in new upcoming phones and some more but this one has a price tag of $300,000. Also, they’re only making five of them. Which makes them too unique! If you are like me, just look away and laugh! … thats what “normal” humans are supposed to do.
Original story @ Gizmodo
Israel seeks to legalize war crimes
Israel is introducing a legislation permitting the holding of hostages, a war crime.
The draft “Imprisonment of Combatants not Entitled to Prisoner of War Status Law” passed its first reading in Israel’s Knesset yesterday by a vote of 22 to 6.
Human Rights watch condemned it and also criticized the sweeping language of the legislation, which provides almost unlimited powers to the military to detain civilians arbitrarily and indefinitely. This raises serious concerns that the legislation could be used to detain persons based on their political beliefs, and not for any actual acts they have committed.
Read complete story @ Human Rights Watch
Reading BlogSpot.com in Pakistan
In Pakistan and India many blog sites are blocked. Since I sometimes features blogs related to blogspot.com some people from Pakistan have asked how to access them. Well the method I found isn’t as easy as clicking a link, but can get your work done.
- You will require registration at one of Online RSS Aggregators like Google Reader first of all.
- Then get the URL of the blog which are interested in reading on regular basis e.g. http://stuarthughes.blogspot.com
- Now click Subscribe to Rss / Add Rss feed link in your online RSS Aggregator.
- Add /rss/atom.xml at end of ur blogspot.com URL to get the RSS feed url.
- Just subscribe to this url e.g. in this example it would be http://stuarthughes.blogspot.com/rss/atom.xml
Congrats! Now you can read Stuart Hughes: Beyond Northern Iraq blog (or any other blog) in your Online reader. The trick is simply that online readers get the data from blogspot.com and then serve you that data. So, you will never get in touch with blogspot.com through your ISP. Simple and effective.
The Sims 2 Soap Opera
Desperate Housewives, Bold and beautiful, General Hospital and so many more feature “desperate” women, in search of love, fame or money. Soap opera lovers watch them all over the world, but do gamers watch them (I seriously doubt that), but we gamers can make fun of them. And thats what “Adventures in Cyberia” is all about. Its story of 5 lovely ladies who or bored to death.
The whole soap is made using The Sims 2 beautiful “social engine” (the name I give it). The site/blog is constantly updated so its a continuous adventure for the ladies and the readers of course.
Watch “Adventures in Cyberia” @ BlogSpot
New Mortal Kombat characters
A screenshot of new Mortal Kombat Armageddon has been released. The game will feature many old and some new additions too (don’t they always do that). Honestly speaking I never liked any MK even after MK3. They became stupid, violent and less HiFi than rest of Beat them up fighting games. Even in this screenshot, characters selected don’t look anything impressive (especially Sektor). Has the developers at Midway played Dead or Alive yet?
Mortal Kombat can do so much better than the new fighting games, they got humans, demons and ninja robots! Whoa! who has got a such a variety of fighters all in one. And the game has a solid history of being a hit fighting game. But still relying on just these historical characters and violent finishing moves isn’t gonna impress gamers. They want flashy graphics and fast gameplay.
Actual screenshot @ Midway Forums
Flickr Photo Toys
If you thought the previous Google Montage was cool but a little dull. Then try these image tools for Flickr users. Now who doesn’t use Flickr these days (cavemen maybe) but everyone else seem to have a collection of their wanted / unwanted photos at Flickr.
This site has more than 25 tools for guys & gals with photos (some of them are restricted to Flickr only), but rest are for any kind of images. The tools are there to make mosaics, photo frames, magazine/cd covers, captioned photos, slideshows and so much more. Do give this one a try.
Flickr Toys @ FlagrantDisregard
Google Images Montage
And in search for all the coolest tools available on net, I ran into this. Its a site that accepts few search terms and based on those it creates a montage of photos obtained by searching those keywords on Google Images search engine. Quick and neat.
See Google Montage @ SleepyGeek
Scientists find real Jurassic Park
An international team of scientists says it has found a “lost world” in the Indonesian jungle that is home to dozens of new animal and plant species. The team recorded new butterflies, frogs, and a series of remarkable plants that included five new palms and a giant rhododendron flower. The survey also found a honeyeater bird that was previously unknown to science.
Damn! Still no dinosaurs!
Read the complete story @ BBC
Divide and conquer
It has happened so many times, and its occurring again. Muslims are being divided… Shia and Sunnis in Iraq are swapping homes, creating segregated communities to avoid the sectarian violence that is engulfing the country.
Iraqi military officers said many families in the religiously-mixed city of Nasser Wa Salaam have moved to neighborhoods where their sect is in the majority. Their homes are either deserted or exchanged with trusted friends of the other sect. About 1,500 more families have fled the city.
Sometimes we unite, at others we divide.. the only explanation is that we are “humans” – The imperfect ones.
Read the story @ AlJazeera
In end.. we are all humans
Thousands of Lebanese have reached across the sectarian and religious divide to help hundreds of thousands of mostly Shia refugees fleeing Israel bombardment in the south of the country. In one east Beirut district, refugees found sanctuary in a place that they would least expect to find it – a school in an area dominated by the Christian Lebanese Forces. The refugees are mostly Shia and many of them are supporters of Hezbollah, an Islamic political party that some Christians blame for starting the current war with Israel. But still its good to see that when a human needs help, its hard to refuse, for that is the link Allah, the Almighty God has created in humans.
“If you leave the politicians out of this then we are all unified,” said Mohammed Kafani, a refugee at the school.
Read the story @ AlJazeera.com
