Wednesday, December 29, 2004


Thailand

Sri Lanka

Phunket Resort

Tsunami.

Vaya que la historia nos marcara, me pregunto como habra sido antes, la cantidad de noticias de las que no te enterarias por estar al otro lado del mundo, pero lo que me pregunto es si el no saberlo les afectaria, ahorita yo creo que muchos estaran tan consternados como con los tostados, pero esque no es para menos, 40,000 muertos no se dice facil, y los que faltan, segun la Red Cross (77,828) esto aumentara minimo al doble en los dias siguientes, ademas la ONU ya se preocupo, no nos vayamos a enfermar por aca, acabo de checar en Reutes y ya van 63 mil que tienen que enterrar ya porque si no, si nos va a terminar pegando.

The United Nations mobilized what it called the biggest relief operation in its history to cope with the disaster.

The colossal surge was triggered by a undersea earthquake of magnitude 9.0, the biggest in 40 years, off the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It spread an arc of death from Indonesia to Sri Lanka and beyond to Africa. U.S. scientists said the quake that set off the wall of water had moved tectonic plates beneath the Indian Ocean by up to 30 meters (100 feet), causing the Earth to wobble on its axis and permanently shortening the day by a fraction of a second.
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Thais discover 700 bodies in single resort

The estimated death toll in Thailand doubled overnight after 700 bodies were found in the wreckage of hotels on one stretch of beach on the mainland north of Phuket island. At Khao Lak, rescuers recovered bodies from the rubble of upmarket resorts such as the Sofitel Hotel where 500 guests and staff were still missing yesterday. Most victims were in the dining room when the tsunami struck, snapping concrete pillars in half and destroying two of its three floors. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=596642
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The lost generation

Up to half the 60,000 victims of the tsunami are children, says UN. Tens of thousands more are orphaned, and face threat of disease The walls of water sent crashing onto the coasts of south Asia by the biggest earthquake in 40 years took a disproportionate number of young lives. It may have been as many as half of the victims - the toll stood at 60,000 last night. As the calmer waters return a steady flow of bodies, communities are coming to terms with a lost generation. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=596642
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Thai police deployed to stop looting

Up to 600 police have been sent to Phang Nga, the province worst hit by the waves, provincial police chief Major General Jead Suveeranont said. So far, 13 Burmese migrant workers had been arrested, he said. An officer in the province's Takua Pa district, which includes the town of Khao Lak, said that 100 Burmese migrant workers stole from the bodies of tourists on the first day of the disaster.
http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story.jsp?sectionid=1274&storyid=2443215
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Areas afectadas por el Tsunami y su propagacion.

http://www.hewsweb.org/downloads/home_page/maps/img/hi_res/gif/20041227Tsunami.gif
http://images.news.com.au/The_Daily_Telegraph/graphics/tsunianimated.gif
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OMS: Agua contaminada, principal peligro de enfermedades en zona devastada por tsunami

El peligro de epidemias en los países azotados por el tsunami en el sureste asiático deriva de la contaminación del agua potable, no de los cadáveres de las víctimas, afirmó hoy Pino Annunziata, experto de la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS). “No es necesario tomar precauciones como enterrarlos en fosas comunes o quemarlos. Es más, tienen derecho a ser sepultados de acuerdo a su religión o tradición” En cuanto al agua, es contaminada por las heces, ya que el sistema de drenaje ha sido afectado.

http://www.un.org/spanish/News/fullstorynews.asp?newsID=3734&criteria1=tsunami&criteria2=
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ONU colaborará en implementación de sistemas de alarma temprana en países del sureste asiático

La Organización de las Naciones Unidas anunció hoy que colaborará en el esfuerzo colectivo de establecer en los países del sureste asiático un sistema de alarma temprana que pueda evitar desastres de la magnitud del provocado por el tsunami del pasado domingo 26. Los sistemas podrían estar funcionando a finales del año entrante. http://www.un.org/spanish/News/fullstorynews.asp?newsID=3739&criteria1=tsunami&criteria2=
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60km from epicentre, a city lies in ruins

From the air, it could be Hiroshima - a town hit with such devastating force it has literally been flattened. From the air it looks like the people of this town, on the west coast of Sumatra, never had the chance to run. Huge waves swept in from the Indian Ocean, smashing virtually every building in their path. Mayor Tengku Zulkarnaen said three-quarters of his city of 95,000 people had been washed away. "We can't calculate it all now, but a rough estimate is tens of thousands dead," he told El Shinta radio.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/12/29/1103996615409.html?oneclick=true
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Sri Lanka: Holiday trip turns into horror ride
Maldives: A tough choice - rebuild or abandon
Thailand: Making sense of figures is grim work
Kenya: Quick thinking saves hundreds of revellers
United States: We're not stingy, says Powell
Europe: Fears rise for thousands of missing tourists
Britain: Actor loses three members of family
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Y que sentiriamos si no lo supieramos?

Saturday, December 11, 2004

The Best Freeware List

Best Free Anti-Virus Software Updated I normally recommend the Norton Anti-virus suite but I'm fully aware that some folks simply can't afford to buy it. If you fall into this category then you should check out AVG Antivirus 6.0 Free Edition. This product has been continuously refined since it was first released in 1991 and now offers very impressive protection capabilities. Additionally, it's relatively small, light on resources, has regular automatic updates and handles email scanning. There is a free and a pro version, the only difference being that the free version has a few non-critical features disabled and has no technical support. Even so, it's an impressive package and a offers the financially challenged a real alternative to the major anti-virus suites. NOTE: AVG are currently upgrading all users to the more advanced version 7 engine. This will include users of the free version of V6.. (5MB) http://www.grisoft.com
Best Free Adware/Spyware/Scumw are Remover UpdatedSpybot Search and Destroy quickly hunts down all those odious applications that are secretly bundled in with many "advertiser-support ed" utilities. It also provides active protection against the current plague of browser hijackers, auto-dialers and other surreptitiously downloaded scumware products. My second choice in this category is Ad-aware SE. It's free too and has a simpler user interface though the free version lacks the active protection offered by Spybot. I use both Spybot and Ad-aware as they tend to find slightly different things. I recommend that you use both as well. http://spybot.safer-networking.de/ ( 2.5MB) http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/ (1.7MB)
Best Free Malware Prevention NewThese days all users face a real risk of malicious programs secretly installing themselves on your computer. Anti-virus and anti-spyware products help reduce the chance of infection but you can really enhance your protection by installing WinPatrol, which provides a vital "last ditch" defense layer by telling you when a product is trying to change any of the critical settings on your PC such as the registry and auto-start areas. WinPatrol simply throws up a dialog asking whether you want to allow the change or not. It's simple but highly effective. The only downside is the messages can confuse some inexperienced users. That reservation aside, this is a product that should be on every PC. (785KB)http://www.winpatrol.com/
Best Free Browser NewInternet Explorer is a great browser but it has become such a target for malicious exploit that it now has become a security risk. There are several excellent alternatives but my top pick goes to Mozilla FireFox. It's faster and leaner than Internet Explorer and since the release of version 1PR, it's stable and reliable. It loads a little slower than IE but once running, it zips along at lightning speed. With tabbed browsing and more free extensions than you could ever want, it offers a major upgrade in your browsing experience. Unlike IE, it's also standards compliant. FireFox is now my everyday browser though occasionally I have to fire up IE to browse a site designed around IE's non standard features. (4.7MB) http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/http://www.techsupportalert.com/firefox.htm <= Free migration guide
Best Free Browser Accelerator There are dozens of products that claim to speed up your surfing but most have little effect. NaviScope is different - it actually works! Not only does it speed up your surfing it also offers optional ad, pop-up, cookie and JavaScript blocking, an extensive set of diagnostic tools and more bells and whistles than you can imagine. My only beef is that the tool bar is very obtrusive so once you set up NaviScope, you should select the option to turn off the toolbar. If you need it, you can always bring it up again though the taskbar icon. (614KB) http://ftp.pcworld.com/pub/new/internet/internet_tools/nscope.exe
Best Free File Manager UpdatedWindows Explorer is fine for simple file management activities but when you have some serious work to do, you need a two pane file manager. I use Directory Opus which is excellent but costs $59. Recently I discovered xplorer². It offers most of the functionality of Directory Opus and is totally free. As a bonus, its user interface is very similar to Windows Explorer, so most users will find this tool easy to learn and use.(575KB) http://www.netez.com/xplorer2/x2lite.htm
Best Free Anonymous Surfing Service There are lots of reasons folks have for wanting to surf anonymously, ranging from simple paranoia to possibly being murdered by a malevolent foreign government. Whatever the reasons, commercial services that offer anonymity are doing real well. However one of the best services, JAP, is totally free and its level of secrecy is better than many commercial systems. However expect your surfing to slow down as you'll be relayed through a chain of servers. You'll also need to change your browser settings to work through a proxy. http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/index_en.html
Best Free Software SuiteGNUWin II is a free software compilation for Windows. This huge suite features dozens of programs including free alternatives to many expensive commercial products. There is Abi Word as an alternative for MS Word, OpenOffice for MS Office XP, The Gimp for Adobe Photoshop, Gzip for WinZIP are dozens more. Taken collectively this suite provides more than enough software to completely set up a PC without spending a cent on applications or utilities. The suite is available or CD or you download the CD image and cut your own. http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/en/index.html
Best Free Notepad ReplacementThere are lots of text editors and Notepad replacements. Some of these aspire to be programming editors while others try to be word processors. What I love about EditPad is that, unlike the others, it concentrates on simply being a better plain text editor and it succeeds brilliantly. It has a Notepad like interface combined with tabbed document windows and the ability to open as many documents as you like with no file size limitations. I use it every day for tasks as diverse as writing Support Alert Newsletter to examining my web log files. Some of the latter can be up to 100MB, yet EditPad handles these huge files with ease. (849KB). http://www.editpadlite.com/editpadlite.html
Best Free Hotkey Utility Hotkeycontrol XP is a free utility that allows you to define your own hotkeys so that a single key press can launch an application, insert commonly used text, change your volume, or just about anything else. Hotkeycontrol works with all versions of Windows from 98 onwards, though some features will only work with Win2K or XP. (0.91KB) http://www.digital-miner.com/hkcontrol.html
Best Free Registry CleanerTo keep the registries on my PCs in top running order I use Fix-It utilities This is a commercial product but I must admit that Toni Helenius' Easy Cleaner performs almost as well and is totally free. As a bonus, it will also detect duplicate files and help you clean up temp files to make more disk space. Remember though, as with every Registry cleaner, to back up your Windows Registry before use. (2.64MB)http://personal.inet.fi/business/toniarts/ecleane.htm
The Best Bookmark CleanerAM-DeadLink scans your bookmark file for dead links or duplicate links. When I tried it on my huge favorites file I discovered 17% of my links were dead. I've now got a much leaner set of favorites and the comfort of knowing that the links actually work. (546KB)http://aignes.com/press/deadlink140.htm
Best Free Route Tracer 3D Traceroute graphically displays Internet route information. You can use it for technical tasks such as diagnosing slow connections or for general purpose snooping like determining the location and owner of a web site or tracing spammers. (996KB) http://www.hlembke.de/prod/3dtraceroute/
The Best Free Screen Capture Utility I've used over half a dozen screen-capture utilities and none of them has really satisfied. Until now. Gadwin screen capture does exactly what I want in the way I want. Further, it avoids the trap of providing lots of useless and confusing features. It's the little things that count like making the hot key PrtSc so I don't have to remember it, and automatically sequentially naming the output files for multiple screen shots. Gadwin will stay on my PC permanently. (976KB) http://www.gadwin.com/printscreen/?prnscr
The Best Free Search Bar UpdatedDave’s Quick Search Bar is a free utility that gives you the same easy access to Google searches as Google's own search bar but wait, there’s more. It also provides access to the excellent Teoma, FAST and other search engines. Because it resides in your task bar, it's accessible from any application. Comes with a host of other features such as dictionary/thesaurus access and even a calculator. If that's not enough for you, it's totally customizable. A serious second choice is the new Google DeskBar which shares many of the features of Dave's Search Bar but is geared exclusively to Google searches. http://www.dqsd.net/ (380KB)http://toolbar.google.com/deskbar/ (452KB)
Best Free Download Accelerator UpdatedStar Downloader 1.43 is not only free of charge, it's free of ads, spyware and other undesirable extras packed into most free download accelerators. On top of that, it is blindingly fast and has a raft of features including automatic mirror site detection, automatic resumption of failed downloads, download scheduling, anti-virus integration and more. If you are not yet using a download accelerator, go get this product and start counting the time you save. The faster your internet connection, the more you will gain. Users with slow modem connections will, unfortunately, benefit least. (1.4MB) http://www.stardownloader.com