TotallyOz

Stef Lacoste converted me to Mac a few years back and have never strayed again. I love my Mac and I do like Safari. Try the new Firefox on your Mac. It took over my spot for number 1.

Rumours had it throughout the day that Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej was granted an audience with His Majesty the King to inform His Majesty of his intention to resign. The rumours said Samak had booked time slot of Radio Thailand at 7:30 am to announce his resignation. The Nation http://www.nationmultimedia.com/breakingne...newsid=30082501

It is already out. I have been using it on my computer and like it so far. It is faster but HARD for me to get use to.

Daniel who has been getting more controversial roles said the dream role for him is a Drag Queen. Yummy. Has anyone been lucky enough to snag any of his Broadway tickets for the production of Equus? Do I smell a hint of gayness in him? http://www.usmagazine.com/news/daniel-radc...ay-a-drag-queen

I am just loving the new version of Firefox for the Mac. It is faster and easier and makes the web so much more enjoyable. With Googles new browser, things will heat up even more I am sure. How many IE guys do we still have out there?

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- Google Inc. is releasing its own Web browser in a long-anticipated move aimed at countering the dominance of Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer and ensuring easy access to its market-leading search engine. The Mountain View, California-based company took the unusual step of announcing its latest product on the Labor Day holiday after it prematurely sent out a comic book drawn up to herald the new browser's arrival. The free browser, called "Chrome," is supposed to be available for downloading Tuesday in more than 100 countries for computers running on Microsoft's Windows operating system. Google said it's still working on versions compatible with Apple Inc.'s Mac computer and the Linux operating system. Google's browser is expected to hit the market a week after Microsoft's unveiling of a test version of its latest browser update, Internet Explorer 8. The tweaks include more tools for Web surfers to cloak their on-line preferences, creating a shield that could make it more difficult for Google and other marketing networks to figure out which ads are most likely to appeal to which individuals. Although Google is using a cartoonish approach to promote Chrome, the new browser underscores the gravity of Google's rivalry with Microsoft, whose Internet Explorer is used by about 75 percent of Web surfers. Google's lead in the lucrative Internet search market is nearly as commanding, with its engine processing nearly two-thirds of the Web's queries. For the past few years, Google has been trying to take advantage of its search engine's popularity to loosen Microsoft's grip on how most people interact with personal computers. The assault so far has been focused on a bundle of computer programs, including word processing and spreadsheet applications, that Google offers as an alternative to one of Microsoft's biggest money makers, its Office suite of products. Google has tried to make its alternatives more appealing and accessible by hosting them for free over Internet connections instead of requiring users to pay a licensing fee to install them on individual computers, as Microsoft typically does. Meanwhile, Microsoft has tried to thwart Google by investing billions in the development of its own search engine and making an unsuccessful attempt to buy Yahoo Inc. for $47.5 billion. The tensions between Microsoft and Google now seem likely to escalate with Google's foray into Web browsing. Until now, Google had been trying to undermine Internet Explorer by supporting Firefox, a Web browser developed by the open-source Mozilla Foundation. Bolstered by an advertising partnership with Google's search engine, Firefox ranks as the second most popular browser, with a market share of more than 10 percent. Google recently extended its advertising alliance with Firefox through 2011. Bearing the stamp of Google's renowned brand, Chrome could be an even more formidable rival to Explorer. Still, Google's name is no guarantee of success. For instance, Google's instant messaging service has not come close to catching up to the market-leading products made by Yahoo, Microsoft and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL. In a blog post Monday, Google touted Chrome as a more sophisticated Web browser better suited for displaying the dynamic and interactive content blossoming on the Web as people migrate from television, radio and newspapers. "The Web gets better with more options and innovation," Sundar Pichai, Google's vice president of product management, and Linus Upson, Google's engineering director, wrote in the posting. "Google Chrome is another option, and we hope it contributes to making the Web even better." Microsoft brushed aside the threat posed by Google in a statement Monday from Dean Hachamovitch, Internet Explorer's general manager. "The browser landscape is highly competitive, but people will choose Internet Explorer 8 for the way it puts the services they want right at their fingertips ... and, more than any other browsing technology, puts them in control of their personal data on-line," Hachamovitch said. Even as it has backed Firefox, Google has openly fretted about the possible ramifications of Microsoft's huge lead in Web browsing. Google is worried that Microsoft could abuse its power by manipulating Internet Explorer's default settings in a way that might diminish traffic to Google's search engine, which serves as the hub of the largest on-line ad network. In 2006, Google contacted the Justice Department to raise alarms about changes to Internet Explorer that Google believed made it more difficult to install search toolbars made by Microsoft's rivals. Although regulators decided not to intervene, Microsoft subsequently modified the way Explorer handled the selection of search toolbars. http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/09/01/goo...r.ap/index.html

Damm, that brings back memories of my southern family childhood. I heard that word too many times over the years.

Not as much as it costs to go to the movie in NYC. The average for a short time here is about 30 USD. A full time bodyguard costs about 600 a month.

Myanmar for the tourist, Part II of Burma as a tourist is a wonderful piece and wanted to make sure that all here look over in that forum for this posting. Some great information there!

Thank you honey. I appreciate that. As I am sure you could have guessed, I am surrounded by 5 Thai bodyguards night and day. Just for this crisis, I have called in another 2 reinforcements. I am not sure how 7 twinks will actually protect me but it sure is fun to sit here with them and wait.

The country is in real turmoil. It is a mad house in Bangkok and I am sure that most of you have see the news reports about the death and the protests becoming violent. As I am currently in the country, I can say that I have seen nothing in my little city. But, I am 2 hours from Bangkok and that is the epicenter of the crisis. The gogo bars have still not closed and it is unlikely to have a great effect on things here. So, for those of you still planning on a visit, no better time than the present!

I love surfing and do so often. I download my music and videos and use tons with ITUNES downloads. Limiting my access would be a real pain in the ass. Here is the ABC News article. Comcast Corp., the nation's second-largest Internet service provider, says it would set an official limit on the amount of data subscribers can download and upload each month. Last week, Comcast -- the second-largest Internet service provider in the country -- announced that starting Oct. 1 it would officially set a threshold for monthly Internet usage. In an online announcement, the service provider said that although it already contacts residential customers who use excessive amounts of bandwidth, it had never provided a specific limit. Now, Comcast said it will amend its user agreement to say that users will be allowed 250 gigabytes of monthly usage. The company emphasizes that its cap is generous and will only affect about 1 percent of its 14.4 million customers. Experts say these customers might include heavy gamers and those who use a significant amount of bandwidth for creating or uploading video. But industry watchers note that Comcast's decision is indicative of a trend by Internet service providers to move toward usage-based service plans. For the rest of the article go to: http://www.abcnews.go.com/Technology/story...9480&page=1

I went in for a drink tonight and was very impressed with the bar. It is beautiful with very comfortable seats and chains from the ceiling. The boys are on the floor and they have room to move and dance around. I had a water (my usual) and they only charged 90 baht. The same at the other bars are 120 and 130. They had a great staff of guys and some very cute ones. I thought the place was charming and wish I had gone in before tonight.

Here the address for Pattaya Branch : Callan Method English Language Centre Co.,Ltd. Branch No.1 194/74-75 Soi Paniad Chang, Moo 9 Center Pattaya Road, Tambol Nongprue, Amphur Banglamung, Chonburi 20260 Tel: 0-3841-0524-6 Fax: 0-3841-0528 E-mail: info@callan.co.th, info@thaiwalen.com Website: http://www.callan.co.th , http://www.thaiwalen.com

Tumescent is one of the TY words. He is so much more read and articulate that I am. When I get an e-mail from him, I need my Webster just to read the e-mail. Most of my e-mails consist of the 7 deadly sins or George Carlin's 7 Words you can't say on TV. I like to keep things plain and simple and things I know.

Runner up in the Miss Alaska contest. She likes hunting and fishing. A longtime member of the NRA and a pro life advocate.

Stu, can I just be honest? I don't have a clue (not only about that but about how many licks to the center of a tootsie roll pop. I have tried many times to find the answer but I don't have the patience for that either). I really don't know. TY and I have been so busy making a mockup for the new site that we haven't discussed it. Do you have a suggestion? Sorry, it took a while to answer. I have been busy with a new guy in my life. He drains me of almost every ounce of energy.

I have been using a new program which I am in love with. It is called The Brain. www.thebrain.com Mirroring the way a human thinks is a tough job for software, but PersonalBrain 4.5, a powerful brainstorming and knowledge management tool, falls just shy of artificial intelligence. PersonalBrain expresses individual topics as nodes in a mind map, a 3-D representation of the relationships between topics. This mind map is referred to as a Brain. Topics in PersonalBrain parlance are called thoughts. Main thoughts (called Parent thoughts) can have Child thoughts (thoughts related to the main or parent thought), Siblings (thoughts related to the child thoughts), and Jumps (links to different thoughts). To create a Brain, you start by entering a single thought and begin connecting it together with other thoughts. A thought can represent any type of information: it could be as simple as a person's name or as rich as a photograph of that person. The result, if done carefully, can be a useful means of visually mapping the naturally interconnected thoughts swirling around in your (physical) brain. Any thought can be related to any other thought and to as many thoughts as necessary. That means that you can take different paths to the same thought, depending on context, which is not unlike the way people really think. Thoughts can include styled notes, attached files, Web pages, and even applications, turning the Brain into a centralized hub for all of your activities. Folders can even be imported en masse, with each file and subfolder automatically becoming an individual thought. Images can be previewed from within a Brain. Wrapping your own brain around PersonalBrain may take some doing. Although it can be used for many of the same things as a traditional outliner, it works entirely differently. Anything can be linked to anything else, a free-form approach that may leave you wondering where to begin. The payoff is much greater flexibility in how you organize information. Click on a thought and it becomes the main thought (showing up in the center of the software's main window) with all of its related thoughts surrounding it. It's like looking at a map of the solar system, except that instead of planets, each node represents an individual thought. The idea behind PersonalBrain is that by connecting thoughts within a dynamic visual interface that can be reorganized with a single click, people will be able to better understand relationships among their information. Usage scenarios are as varied as the individuals who use it: to do lists, presentations, genealogy, and general research are but a few examples. Brains can be created around specific interests, projects, or events. Or you can get really ambitious and try to map everything in your life into a single monster Brain. Although this is the first version of PersonalBrain for the Mac, the program has been around for years. So it's not surprising that the mind maps PersonalBrain produces can become quite complex and difficult to navigate. To ease navigation, PersonalBrain provides Pins that act as bookmarks, along with a breadcrumb display and a capable search function. For the rest of the article: http://www.macworld.com/article/134792/200...nalbrain45.html

I hope Kevin has better tastes than that!

I thought her speech was BORING. Not impressive at all!

You are totally incorrect. I fuck because I want to have a baby. I am still trying to get in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the first set of male/male to reproduce.

SAO PAULO, Brazil--Drive through the Morumbi neighborhood and you'll see luxury homes and one of the city's best hospitals. But head just two blocks further and you will find yourself in Paraisopolis, one of the city's many slums. No wonder that tech executives see the Brazilian market in equally divergent terms. Brazil is the world's fifth-largest PC market and is part of the influential BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) that always gets talked about. Yet for all its strengths, it does not have the cash influx of either India or China, nor does it have those countries' strong education systems, cheap labor forces or access to capital. "We always joke that the BRIC is really IC," said Claudia Fan Munce, an IBM executive who grew up in Brazil and focuses on IBM's venture efforts in emerging markets. From where Intel Brazil general manager Oscar Clarke sits, Brazil is doing just fine. "Besides China, Brazil is the beautiful lady in the party when we talk about emerging markets," Clarke said. As a PC sales market, Brazil is unquestionably strong--having passed countries like Germany to become the fifth-largest computer market in the world. It's also a hub for banking technology and open-source software. At the same time, it is a place where abject poverty abounds, meaning that there are millions whose needs are much more basic than a new PC. On the consumer PC front, Brazil owes much of its recent growth to broader availability of financing. Indeed, at many middle-class department stores, the PC price advertised is the monthly price with financing as opposed to the total price being paid over two to three years. In some cases the interest rates are still high, but in many other cases rates are as low as 5 percent or 6 percent per year. That's compared with just a few years ago, when credit was scant and could be more like 5 percent a month, says Intel's Clarke. A big part of this has been a government-backed "PC for all" program that subsidizes the interest rate for some models, though only those with Linux qualify. "They do not accept Microsoft," Clarke said. That said, some estimates show as many as 18 or 19 out of every 20 machines sold with Linux ultimately are converted to some form of Windows. "There was a retailer in one of the countries that sold their systems with Linux," said Gartner analyst Luis Anavitarte. "They made a survey of clients within the first 30 days; 95 percent were already on Windows." You will find global PC makers such as Hewlett-Packard and Dell, though the country also has some homegrown brands, most notably Positivo. Among the less well-known brands is Itautec, actually an offshoot of a leading Brazilian bank. According to Wikipedia, it was Itautec that was the first PC maker in Brazil to sell Windows 3.1 preinstalled and localized in Portuguese. Brazil is also a key spot for Google, being a stronghold for the company's search and Gmail businesses as well as one of the only places where its Orkut social-networking service is a leader. For a variety of cultural and economic reasons, Brazil will probably never rival India or China or even places like Vietnam as a place for labor arbitrage. However, it has made gains in other areas, such as access to capital. "Venture capital is something quite recent in Brazil," said Augusto Cesar Godelha, secretary general of Brazil's ministry of science and technology. He noted that it is not a notion that is well-established in Brazilian culture and has been a stumbling block. "It was very difficult to find venture capital to use it to develop new companies. This has been changing," Godelha said. "Venture capitalists are starting to come, not only from outside Brazil to Brazil, but even inside Brazil, there have been groups forming," he said. One of the largest efforts is FIR Capital, a Brazilian firm that started in 1999 to invest in emerging technology companies. Last year, U.S.-based VC firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson took a shareholder interest in FIR. Striving to improve education Another key issue, along with capital, is Brazil's educational system. While strides have been made, both those in the system and outside it say it still has a long way to go. The first step, Godelha says, was making sure that every child is being encouraged to go to school. Now, he says, the country is working on improving the quality of education. It is still the case, for example, that most students go to school for just four hours a day. "It is not only the universality," Godelha said. "It has to be good quality." Brazil is also a country with a huge gap between rich and poor, with favelas (slums) located throughout the country's largest cities. "Brazil is a beautiful country," says Internet cafe owner Fernando McCray. "But you have some problems--some economic problems." Unemployment is a huge issue, accentuated by the huge number of young people who enter the working-age population each year. "We need to open every year 2 million jobs," McCray said. But even with where Brazil's education and venture capital are today, large multinational companies are finding big opportunities. IBM, for example, has 11,000 workers in Brazil. Chip design software company Cadence has been working to help develop a microelectronics industry in Brazil. In May, the company had a summit that included hundreds of government and technology leaders, including Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Advanced Micro Devices' Hector Ruiz. Cadence also has worked to develop a one-year post-graduate program in commercial chip design aimed at training 1,500 designers over the next several years. Wendy Reeves Dunn, who is Cadence's vice president of worldwide alternate channels, said Brazil has seen much value coming into the country in semiconductors made elsewhere and is eager to get in on the act. While chip manufacturing plants are expensive, Dunn said the country has eagerly embraced the idea of designing more chips in Brazil, even if they are made elsewhere. Some of Brazil's most successful efforts, Dunn said, have focused on chips unique to the Brazilian market. One example is an RFID (radio frequency identification) chip that caters to the country's huge agribusiness economy. "They are actually designing chips for cows' ears," Dunn said. "They are new for Brazil and they are designed in Brazil." That's already a large market, given that Brazil has more cows than any other country. But it's just the start, Dunn said, adding that Brazil has a mandate that automobiles also get tracking chips. "Those same RFIDs, those will go into cars." Click here to read all of the blogs in The Borders of Computing series. http://news.cnet.com/Brazil-An-emerging-ma...5&subj=news

(LifeWire) -- While she was studying in Brazil during college, the one thing Stephanie Gerson longed to do before leaving was spend time in the thick of the Amazon rain forest. Unfortunately, she couldn't find a tour that would take her past the forest's edge. So, when a college-aged busboy at a resort she was visiting began flirting with her, she asked him if he thought a tourist could survive alone in the jungle. "He laughed and told me I was nuts," says Gerson, 27, who works part-time in online marketing for a chocolate company in San Francisco. Then he told her that he'd grown up in the jungle in a nearby indigenous community. That was all Gerson needed to hear. Although she wasn't attracted to the guy, Gerson flirted right back in the hopes that he would be her jungle tour guide. It worked. The busboy wormed his way out of work, and the two headed into the rain forest. "It was amazing," Gerson says of her adventure in 2000. "We built our homes out of palm leaves, I saw animals I'd never seen before, he taught me the medicinal properties of all the plants, we picked fruit off the trees, we swam with and ate piranhas. And, of course, we had sex ... for almost two weeks." Body currency system Gerson never felt sleazy or uncomfortable with her unspoken arrangement with the busboy. "It was a good barter both ways," she says. "I got to stay in the jungle, and he got to have sex with a cute, young American girl." Such trades aren't so unusual. Throughout history, humans have used their bodies to get what they want -- from ancient Egyptian ruler Cleopatra, who cemented her power through liaisons with Roman rulers Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, to the man and woman who were arrested at a Fort Wright, Kentucky, motel in late June for allegedly swapping sex for gasoline. Regardless of our motivation, scientists say we're hardwired to use our bodies as a bargaining chip. A recent study of 475 University of Michigan undergraduates ages 17 to 26 found that 27 percent of the men and 14 percent of the women who weren't in a committed relationship had offered someone favors or gifts -- help prepping for a test, laundry washing, tickets to a college football game -- in exchange for sex. On the flip side, 5 percent of the men surveyed and 9 percent of the women said they'd attempted to trade sex for such freebies. And although they weren't hard up for resources, the students surveyed "recognized the value of this socioeconomic currency system," says Daniel Kruger, research scientist at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, who published his findings in the April issue of "Evolutionary Psychology." "It's more about getting what you want than getting what you need," he says. "Unless you think everyone needs a $200 Louis Vuitton bag." The handyman hookup But unattached coeds aren't the only ones who barter with their bodies. Some professionals will attest that their skills are, well, sexy. "Women are turned on just by the simple idea of their guy getting off his ass and doing something for them," says Rocky Fino, author of "Will Cook for Sex: A Guy's Guide to Cooking." It works both ways, he adds. "Give it to me first thing in the morning, and I'll play [handyman] all day," says Fino, a 39-year-old father of two and part-time construction worker. Ben Corbett, a 39-year-old contractor from Boulder, Colorado, credits his tool belt with prompting the barrage of come-ons he fields from female clients -- most of them married -- on a regular basis. "It starts with the flirting, and it just progresses," says Corbett, who has run a construction and remodeling business for 20 years. "They'll touch my hand, and there's all this physical contact. Or they'll run around in their pajamas." "Once," he says, "I was painting the hallway right outside a client's bedroom, and she was lying on her bed like a girl at a slumber party with her legs up and her arms crossed and her head resting on them, asking me if I had a girlfriend. "It's all about the fantasy of being taken by the rough-hewn construction guy," muses Corbett, who, despite the temptation, has avoided getting sexually involved with his clientele for fear of jeopardizing his business. It's the biology, stupid Call it crass, sexist or gender stereotyping all you want, but there are thousands of years of biological programming at work here, says Dr. Chris Fariello, director of the Institute for Sex Therapy at the Council for Relationships, a nonprofit relationship-counseling group based in Philadelphia. Plain and simple, a partner who provides more resources -- wealth, shelter, home repairs -- is seen as more attractive and stands to reap more sexual rewards. Or, as Fariello puts it, "I don't get anybody in my office who says, 'My husband sits on the couch all day and eats bonbons, and I want to have sex with him all the time.'" http://edition.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/persona...tuff/index.html

Lucky, I do wonder if I knew you from the old Gaiety days. I was quite a regular.

I like to believe I know the agendas of the parties but I don't. At least I don't see them put into action too often. The Democratic led Congress has failed miserably at doing its job in furthering its agenda. I don't think they have had any balls to stand up to Bush. And while I had great hopes for Nancy being the leader, she has also failed. I do think that Dennis Kucinich is about the only one of them that has any balls left. The rest are dickless.