Is this even possible? According to The Business Roundtable which is an association of CEO�s of established US companies, the threat is �urgent and real.� The breakdown of such critical information infrastructure has a 10 to 20% chance of happening in the next ten years. This can be a result of many incidences. It can be natural such as calamities or even man-made disasters such as malicious codes, code errors, or terrorist attacks.

The group also stated that an Internet meltdown, if it would ever happen, will result in reduced productivity. Profits will fall as well as stock prices. Consumer spending will erode and a liquidity crisis has a big possibility of happening. This was also discussed in �Growing Business Dependence on the Internet � New Risks Require CEO Action� � a Business Roundtable report based on earlier risk analyses done by the World Economic Forum in Geneva.

Source: ComputerWorld

If you have buddies or business partners from the Middle East or India, don’t expect an email or a Private Message coming from them for a week or so. The reason being that they are disconnected to the Internet; no, it’s not because of some government crackdown or terrorist activity, but rather because of two damaged undersea cables in the Mediterranean.

There was disruption to 70% of the nationwide network in Egypt, and India suffered up to 60% disruption.
UK firms such as British Airways have told the BBC that call centres have been affected by the outage.
Industry experts said it could take up to one week to repair the damaged cables and resume full service.
International telephone calls, which have also been affected, are being rerouted to work around the problem.

Not to worry though, repairs are underway and you’ll get that email from your boss really soon.
Source

In terms of building affiliate sites, this means that I focus on product-related keywords and key phrases. People searching for products do so to research and “make sure” about a purchase decision, in most cases. And some are literally searching for the order form.

A small percentage do so for other “non-buying” reasons, but the majority are either on the verge of buying and in need of a little “push” – or they’re simply looking for the place to insert their credit card number because of previous research.

Thanks to gamers from all over and l33t-speak (that�s hacker language for the laymen out there) shout — “w00t!” — has just been named as the “Word of the Year” by the Merriam-Webster Online Web Site. According to the Merriam-Webster Web site, the word �w00t!� (spelled with two zero�s instead of two letter O�s) is an acronym for �We owned the other team,� but is mainly used as an interjection to express joy, most especially in the case of triumph.

Such as other coded languages, l33t-speak was developed for exclusivity so as to make it harder to detect hackers� online conversations. And as the nature of speakers of coded languages, despite the popularity of “w00t!,� I�m sure that these guys have moved on and have coined another term to substitute for it. But I�m sure that whatever that new term is, it would eventually get out of its exclusivity and may even be the next catch phrase of 2008.

Source: Yahoo! News

Yep, those bloody pirates have struck again! But the British police were right to save the day as they conducted a dawn raid in Cardiff, Welsh and arrested three people suspected of involvement in Internet-based music and film piracy rings. Two men (one of which is the ring leader) and a woman were said to be part of the biggest suppliers of pirated music and films in Britain, earning about 3,000 pounds (6,173 $) a month. Now I understand how these cyber thieves find the piracy business a lucrative one. Too bad it�s considered illegal and unethical. But piracy is not going to end unless people stop buying from them. Just some food for thought, folks.

Source: Reuters

I don�t think this post can cover a lot of the improvements made on Firefox 3 Beta 1. I guess the delays are sure worth it. Now let�s get down to the good stuff:

Fixes of 11,000 plus bugs
Change of 2 million lines of code
One-click info button to get site (ownership and identity) info
Automatically disables older insecure versions of plug-ins
Workability on Microsoft Windows Vista parental controls
Resumption of downloads
Ability to save tabs
Places bookmarking engine with Smart Places Folder for further organization of bookmarks
Browser speed increases
XPCOM Tool that reduces memory leakage
And more!

Source: Internetnews.com

We can now watch most shows over the web through streaming media and you have to wonder if the TV cable companies are alarmed by this development. Cable TV is losing some of its subscribers thanks to online access to shows and with that in mind, their usual subscription rates may soon become passé.

One thing that cable has going for its self is that it still has the clarity and stability of signals that make them preferred. But technology has its way of improving fast so cable companies better have something better up their sleeves soon!

(Source) Foxbusiness

As a whole, the kids of today should feel lucky that they have the benefits of the Internet to use in terms of research and doing their lessons. It makes easier for them rather than hitting the books or looking for relevant lessons in the daily paper.

The weird thing is that kids today even have to get the help of tutors which should not be the case. Perhaps education is lifting the level a notch but it should not be an excuse. With that in mind, is the Internet good for education or just for games and entertainment for kids today?

At first, you would think that Facebook is no other than another social networking website which only targets subscribers and copy the concept of Friendster and MySpace. While these were the preliminary assessments, Facebook is now an obvious leader thanks to the applications that it has added to the fray, making people log on to play with them rather than pay attention to meeting new people.

Games and quizzes have been added to be integrated with Facebook and many people are getting hooked on to them. The best part of it is that they were not developed by Facebook but independently. The ease of integration has become profitable for Facebook, something other social networking sites failed to consider.