Monday, August 31, 2009

Steps to Proceed with Google Adsense

Google Adsense, the most popular contextual advertising service on the internet, can make money for anyone. Learning some simple tricks and techniques can explode your income even more.

THING YOU NEED:

1. Make a Website or A Blog
2. Signup for a Google Adsense account
3. Spend some time working and advertising you website blog or script whatever it may be.

STEPS YOU NEED TO FOLLOW:

1. Create a website or blog to put Google Adsense on. Your website should focus on a particular niche or keyword and be optimized for search engine traffic.

2. Sign up for a Google Adsense account. This is free and easy. After signing up, you have access to all the possible ad blocs and links necessary to make money with Adsense.

3. Insert the code for a Google Adsense ad block or link into your website or blog. This ad block should be above the fold. That means it should be visible on your blog or site without scrolling down. The colors should match your website. You can use up to three Google Adsense ad blocks per website or blog.

4. Get traffic to your website. Making money with Google Adsense is all about getting traffic. The more traffic you receive, the more people will click on the Adsense ads and the more money you will make.

5. Wait and continue building. You cannot build a website and leave it alone and expect to make money from Google Adsense. Keep adding keyword specific content, link building, and advertising. As your site and counter numbers grow, so will your Google Adsense account.

Get a free blog from blogger.com (google's service): http://blogger.com
Official website of Google Adsense: http://www.google.com/adsense/

Previous Post's: Chandrayan 1, Mission failure

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ISRO Chandrayan 1, mission failure!

A sudden puff of electro-magnetic radiation caused by a burst of sun spot activity may have knocked off Chandrayaan-1, India's ambitious Rs 400 crore mission to the moon.

Senior scientists monitoring the Chandrayaan-1 here feel that there was an unusual spike in levels of electro-magnetic radiation levels that could have been triggered by sun spot activity.

This hit Chandrayaan-1 and knocked its onboard computer system resulting in the snapping of radio communication links between the spacecraft and the mother station at Indian Deep Space Network at Byalalu near Bangalore.

ISRO had anticipated high levels of electro-magnetic radiation, but what happened on Saturday early morning as the spacecraft emerged from the back side of the moon was an unexpected `accident'. In other words, Chandrayaan-1 just ran into a headlong crash with a massive cloud of highly charged particles caused by sunspot activity.

Every 11 years the sun develops `spots' that let out huge clouds of charged particles that can travel to the outer limits of the solar system. It is known to knock out communication satellites around the earth. These particles do not reach the earth in high doses as the atmosphere enveloping the earth acts as a shield.

Scientists say that Chandrayaan-1 had been shielded to withstand double the dose of radiation that was expected. The calculation of the dose was given by the US based NASA.

The spacecraft was also baked by direct solar heat and radiated lunar heat resulting in a huge jump in the internal temperature. As a result, the ground mission had to shut down some of the onboard systems early on.

All these would be factored in when Chandrayaan-2 goes for the manufacturing stage. Chandrayaan-2 is expected to be launched late 2012 or early 2013.

The abrupt end to Chandrayaan-1 would not affect the second lunar mission, sources here said adding that ISRO has learnt some critical lessons.

An assessment committee would now analyse the available data to identify the core problems, including the radiation doses.

"The primary lesson learnt is that we have to have a detailed understanding and knowledge of the environment we are working with. There was a higher level of radiation around the moon than assessed that caused the failure. In future, we will have to use devices that are more resistant to radiation," ISRO chief G Madhavan Nair said.

The launch of Chandrayaan-1 last October put India in an elite club of countries with moon missions: the United States, Russia, Japan, China and members of the European Space Agency. The mission was part of India's effort to assert its power in space and claim some of the business opportunities there. One focus was to prospect the lunar surface for natural resources, including uranium for nuclear fuel.

Ten months after it was launched, India's maiden moon mission the ambitious Chandrayaan-1 came to an abrupt end today after ISRO lost communication with the spacecraft, cutting short the dream odyssey that was expected to last two years.




In this Sept. 18, 2008 file photo, The Chandrayaan 1 spacecraft, India's first unmanned mission to the Moon, is seen as it is unveiled at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Satellite Center in Bangalore. Scientists at India's national space agency said Saturday that all communication links with the country's only satellite orbiting the moon have snapped and they were unable to send commands to the spacecraft. Radio contact with Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was abruptly lost early Saturday, said a statement issued by the ISRO.

"The mission is definitely over. We have lost contact with the spacecraft," said Project Director of the Chandrayaan-1 mission M Annadurai.

However, he said: "It (Chandrayaan-1) has done its job technically...100 per cent. Scientifically also, it has done almost 90-95 percent of its job".

The two-year mission, launched on October 22 last year with much fanfare, was abandoned early Saturday after the after radio contact with the mooncraft was abruptly lost at 0130 hours.

The Deep Space Network at Byalalu near here received the data from the 1,380 kg Chandrayaan-1, which carried 11 instruments on board, including six from overseas, during the previous orbit up to 0025 hours.

ISRO is conducting detailed review of the telemetry data from the spacecraft. "We will analyse as to what happened," Annadurai said.


Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, launched by homegrown PSLV-C11 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, has completed 312 days in orbit, making more than 3,400 orbits around the moon.

It has provided large volume of data from sophisticated sensors such as terrain mapping camera, hyper-spectral imager and moon mineralogy mapper, meeting most of the scientific objectives of the mission.

India terminates moon mission, ISRO chief to meet PM

India Sunday decided to terminate its first unmanned moon mission as contact could not be re-established with the spacecraft Chandrayaan, Indian Space Research organisation (ISRO) Chairman G. Madhavan Nair said, adding that he would meet the prime minister next week to brief him about the development.

"We are disappointed with what has happened, but we have managed to salvage a large volume of data," Nair told reporters here.

"We are content with the result," he said, adding that nearly 95 percent of the mission's objectives have been completed.

"Nearly 70,000 images of the moon have been captured during the mission. We were also conducting joint experiments with National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) scientists and sharing signals received from our spacecraft," he said.

Chandrayaan-1, launched in October last year, sent last message 00.25 IST Saturday and the space agency's Deep Space Network (DSN) lost radio contact with the spacecraft five minutes later.

Previous Post's: Krishna Kumar Birla's 1st death ceremony

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Sunday, August 30, 2009

Krishna Kumar Birla (1st death ceremony)

Dr. Krishna Kumar Birla (11 November 1918 – 30 August 2008) was a noted Indian industrialist of the Birla family, and the second son of Ghanshyam Das Birla. He also served as a Member of the Rajya Sabha. K.K. was one of the few noted industrialists who supported economic reforms in India in 1991.

In 1991, Birla established the K.K. Birla Foundation to promote Hindi literature and was the Chancellor of the Birla Institute of Technology and Science at Pilani.

Birla was the group chairman of the Zuari-Chambal group of companies with a turnover of Rs.10,000 crores. He was also the Chairman of ZUARI-CHAMBAL-PARADEEP, India's largest fertilizer combine in private sector.

Birla died on 30 August 2008 after a brief illness.

After the demise of Dr.Birla, his son-in-law Mr.S.K.Poddar have taken over as the chairman of Zuari-Chambal-Paradeep fertilizer combines. The sugar business is now headed by Mrs.Nandini Nopany, eldest daughter of Dr.Birla and Media group, Hindustan Times Media, is now chaired by Mrs.Shobhana Bhartia, Member of Parliament(Rajya Sabha). Mr.Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chairman-Aditya Birla Group and nephew of Dr.Birla, is the Chancellor of BITS-Pilani, the educational institutes of Birla Group, now.

Group companies include:

  • Zuari Industries Ltd, (Flagship Company of the group)
  • Chambal Fertlizers & Chemicals Ltd, (Promoted by Zuari in 1984)
  • Paradeep Phosphates Ltd, (J.V, ZIL 80.41% & Govt. of India 19.59%)
  • Zuari Investments Ltd, (Subsidiary of Z.I.L)
  • Zuari Furniture Ltd, (Subsidiary of Z.I.L)
  • Zuari Seeds Ltd, (Subsidiary of Z.I.L)
  • Zuari Cement Ltd, (J.V, Z.I.L withdraws its share, now a Italcementi Group company)
  • Chambal Agrotech Ltd, (J.V in Australia)
  • Chambal Food Processing Unit, (Sold out)
  • Sutlej Industries Ltd, (Spinning Mills)
  • Birla Textile Mills Ltd,
  • Oudh Sugar Mills Ltd,
  • Texmaco Ltd,
  • Indian Steamship Company Ltd,
  • Zuari Indian Oiltanking Ltd, (J.V with I.O.L)
  • Simon India Ltd, (J.V with Simon Carves)
  • ISG Novasoft Ltd, (J.V with ISG, USA)
  • Indo Maroc Phosphore Ltd,
  • Style Spa Furniture Ltd,
  • Hindustan Times Media Ltd,

Previous Post's: Computer Virus


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Saturday, August 29, 2009

Computer Virus

A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without the permission or knowledge of the owner. The term "virus" is also commonly but erroneously used to refer to other types of malware, adware, and spyware programs that do not have the reproductive ability. A true virus can only spread from one computer to another (in some form of executable code) when its host is taken to the target computer; for instance because a user sent it over a network or the Internet, or carried it on a removable medium such as a floppy disk, CD, DVD, or USB drive. Viruses can increase their chances of spreading to other computers by infecting files on a network file system or a file system that is accessed by another computer.

The term "computer virus" is sometimes used as a catch-all phrase to include all types of malware. Malware includes computer viruses, worms, trojan horses, most rootkits, spyware, dishonest adware, crimeware, and other malicious and unwanted software), including true viruses. Viruses are sometimes confused with computer worms and Trojan horses, which are technically different. A worm can exploit security vulnerabilities to spread itself to other computers without needing to be transferred as part of a host, and a Trojan horse is a program that appears harmless but has a hidden agenda. Worms and Trojans, like viruses, may cause harm to either a computer system's hosted data, functional performance, or networking throughput, when they are executed. Some viruses and other malware have symptoms noticeable to the computer user, but many are surreptitious.

Most personal computers are now connected to the Internet and to local area networks, facilitating the spread of malicious code. Today's viruses may also take advantage of network services such as the World Wide Web, e-mail, Instant Messaging, and file sharing systems to spread.

History

The Creeper virus was first detected on ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet in the early 1970s. Creeper was an experimental self-replicating program written by Bob Thomas at BBN in 1971. Creeper used the ARPANET to infect DEC PDP-10 computers running the TENEX operating system. Creeper gained access via the ARPANET and copied itself to the remote system where the message, "I'm the creeper, catch me if you can!" was displayed. The Reaper program was created to delete Creeper.

A program called "Rother J" was the first computer virus to appear "in the wild" — that is, outside the single computer or lab where it was created. Written in 1981 by Richard Skrenta, it attached itself to the Apple DOS 3.3 operating system and spread via floppy disk. This virus was created as a practical joke when Richard Skrenta was still in high school. It was injected in a game on a floppy disk. On its 50th use the Elk Cloner virus would be activated, infecting the computer and displaying a short poem beginning "Elk Cloner: The program with a personality."

The first PC virus in the wild was a boot sector virus dubbed Brain, created in 1986 by the Farooq Alvi Brothers, operating out of Lahore, Pakistan, reportedly to deter piracy of the software they had written. However, analysts have claimed that the Ashar virus, a variant of Brain, possibly predated it based on code within the virus.

Before computer networks became widespread, most viruses spread on removable media, particularly floppy disks. In the early days of the personal computer, many users regularly exchanged information and programs on floppies. Some viruses spread by infecting programs stored on these disks, while others installed themselves into the disk boot sector, ensuring that they would be run when the user booted the computer from the disk, usually inadvertently. PCs of the era would attempt to boot first from a floppy if one had been left in the drive. Until floppy disks fell out of use, this was the most successful infection strategy and boot sector viruses were the most common in the wild for many years.

Traditional computer viruses emerged in the 1980s, driven by the spread of personal computers and the resultant increase in BBS, modem use, and software sharing. Bulletin board-driven software sharing contributed directly to the spread of Trojan horse programs, and viruses were written to infect popularly traded software. Shareware and bootleg software were equally common vectors for viruses on BBS's. Within the "pirate scene" of hobbyists trading illicit copies of retail software, traders in a hurry to obtain the latest applications were easy targets for viruses.

Macro viruses have become common since the mid-1990s. Most of these viruses are written in the scripting languages for Microsoft programs such as Word and Excel and spread throughout Microsoft Office by infecting documents and spreadsheets. Since Word and Excel were also available for Mac OS, most could also spread to Macintosh computers. Although most of these viruses did not have the ability to send infected e-mail, those viruses which did took advantage of the Microsoft Outlook COM interface.

Some old versions of Microsoft Word allow macros to replicate themselves with additional blank lines. If two macro viruses simultaneously infect a document, the combination of the two, if also self-replicating, can appear as a "mating" of the two and would likely be detected as a virus unique from the "parents."

A virus may also send a web address link as an instant message to all the contacts on an infected machine. If the recipient, thinking the link is from a friend (a trusted source) follows the link to the website, the virus hosted at the site may be able to infect this new computer and continue propagating.

Cross-site scripting viruses emerged recently, and were academically demonstrated in 2005. Since 2005 there have been multiple instances of the cross-site scripting viruses in the wild, exploiting websites such as MySpace and Yahoo.

Infection strategies

In order to replicate itself, a virus must be permitted to execute code and write to memory. For this reason, many viruses attach themselves to executable files that may be part of legitimate programs. If a user attempts to launch an infected program, the virus' code may be executed simultaneously. Viruses can be divided into two types based on their behavior when they are executed. Nonresident viruses immediately search for other hosts that can be infected, infect those targets, and finally transfer control to the application program they infected. Resident viruses do not search for hosts when they are started. Instead, a resident virus loads itself into memory on execution and transfers control to the host program. The virus stays active in the background and infects new hosts when those files are accessed by other programs or the operating system itself.

Nonresident viruses

Nonresident viruses can be thought of as consisting of a finder module and a replication module. The finder module is responsible for finding new files to infect. For each new executable file the finder module encounters, it calls the replication module to infect that file.

Resident viruses

Resident viruses contain a replication module that is similar to the one that is employed by nonresident viruses. This module, however, is not called by a finder module. The virus loads the replication module into memory when it is executed instead and ensures that this module is executed each time the operating system is called to perform a certain operation. The replication module can be called, for example, each time the operating system executes a file. In this case the virus infects every suitable program that is executed on the computer.

Resident viruses are sometimes subdivided into a category of fast infectors and a category of slow infectors. Fast infectors are designed to infect as many files as possible. A fast infector, for instance, can infect every potential host file that is accessed. This poses a special problem when using anti-virus software, since a virus scanner will access every potential host file on a computer when it performs a system-wide scan. If the virus scanner fails to notice that such a virus is present in memory the virus can "piggy-back" on the virus scanner and in this way infect all files that are scanned. Fast infectors rely on their fast infection rate to spread. The disadvantage of this method is that infecting many files may make detection more likely, because the virus may slow down a computer or perform many suspicious actions that can be noticed by anti-virus software. Slow infectors, on the other hand, are designed to infect hosts infrequently. Some slow infectors, for instance, only infect files when they are copied. Slow infectors are designed to avoid detection by limiting their actions: they are less likely to slow down a computer noticeably and will, at most, infrequently trigger anti-virus software that detects suspicious behavior by programs. The slow infector approach, however, does not seem very successful.

Vectors and hosts

Viruses have targeted various types of transmission media or hosts. This list is not exhaustive:

* Binary executable files (such as COM files and EXE files in MS-DOS, Portable Executable files in Microsoft Windows, and ELF files in Linux)
* Volume Boot Records of floppy disks and hard disk partitions
* The master boot record (MBR) of a hard disk
* General-purpose script files (such as batch files in MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows, VBScript files, and shell script files on Unix-like platforms).
* Application-specific script files (such as Telix-scripts)
* System specific autorun script files (such as Autorun.inf file needed to Windows to automatically run software stored on USB Memory Storage Devices).
* Documents that can contain macros (such as Microsoft Word documents, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, AmiPro documents, and Microsoft Access database files)
* Cross-site scripting vulnerabilities in web applications
* Arbitrary computer files. An exploitable buffer overflow, format string, race condition or other exploitable bug in a program which reads the file could be used to trigger the execution of code hidden within it. Most bugs of this type can be made more difficult to exploit in computer architectures with protection features such as an execute disable bit and/or address space layout randomization.

PDFs, like HTML, may link to malicious code.[citation needed]PDFs can also be infected with malicious code.

In operating systems that use file extensions to determine program associations (such as Microsoft Windows), the extensions may be hidden from the user by default. This makes it possible to create a file that is of a different type than it appears to the user. For example, an executable may be created named "picture.png.exe", in which the user sees only "picture.png" and therefore assumes that this file is an image and most likely is safe.

An additional method is to generate the virus code from parts of existing operating system files by using the CRC16/CRC32 data. The initial code can be quite small (tens of bytes) and unpack a fairly large virus. This is analogous to a biological "prion" in the way it works but is vulnerable to signature based detection.

This attack has not yet been seen "in the wild".

Methods to avoid detection

In order to avoid detection by users, some viruses employ different kinds of deception. Some old viruses, especially on the MS-DOS platform, make sure that the "last modified" date of a host file stays the same when the file is infected by the virus. This approach does not fool anti-virus software, however, especially those which maintain and date Cyclic redundancy checks on file changes.

Some viruses can infect files without increasing their sizes or damaging the files. They accomplish this by overwriting unused areas of executable files. These are called cavity viruses. For example the CIH virus, or Chernobyl Virus, infects Portable Executable files. Because those files have many empty gaps, the virus, which was 1 KB in length, did not add to the size of the file.

Some viruses try to avoid detection by killing the tasks associated with antivirus software before it can detect them.

As computers and operating systems grow larger and more complex, old hiding techniques need to be updated or replaced. Defending a computer against viruses may demand that a file system migrate towards detailed and explicit permission for every kind of file access.

Avoiding bait files and other undesirable hosts

A virus needs to infect hosts in order to spread further. In some cases, it might be a bad idea to infect a host program. For example, many anti-virus programs perform an integrity check of their own code. Infecting such programs will therefore increase the likelihood that the virus is detected. For this reason, some viruses are programmed not to infect programs that are known to be part of anti-virus software. Another type of host that viruses sometimes avoid is bait files. Bait files (or goat files) are files that are specially created by anti-virus software, or by anti-virus professionals themselves, to be infected by a virus. These files can be created for various reasons, all of which are related to the detection of the virus:

* Anti-virus professionals can use bait files to take a sample of a virus (i.e. a copy of a program file that is infected by the virus). It is more practical to store and exchange a small, infected bait file, than to exchange a large application program that has been infected by the virus.
* Anti-virus professionals can use bait files to study the behavior of a virus and evaluate detection methods. This is especially useful when the virus is polymorphic. In this case, the virus can be made to infect a large number of bait files. The infected files can be used to test whether a virus scanner detects all versions of the virus.
* Some anti-virus software employs bait files that are accessed regularly. When these files are modified, the anti-virus software warns the user that a virus is probably active on the system.

Since bait files are used to detect the virus, or to make detection possible, a virus can benefit from not infecting them. Viruses typically do this by avoiding suspicious programs, such as small program files or programs that contain certain patterns of 'garbage instructions'.

A related strategy to make baiting difficult is sparse infection. Sometimes, sparse infectors do not infect a host file that would be a suitable candidate for infection in other circumstances. For example, a virus can decide on a random basis whether to infect a file or not, or a virus can only infect host files on particular days of the week.

Encryption with a variable key

A more advanced method is the use of simple encryption to encipher the virus. In this case, the virus consists of a small decrypting module and an encrypted copy of the virus code. If the virus is encrypted with a different key for each infected file, the only part of the virus that remains constant is the decrypting module, which would (for example) be appended to the end. In this case, a virus scanner cannot directly detect the virus using signatures, but it can still detect the decrypting module, which still makes indirect detection of the virus possible. Since these would be symmetric keys, stored on the infected host, it is in fact entirely possible to decrypt the final virus, but this is probably not required, since self-modifying code is such a rarity that it may be reason for virus scanners to at least flag the file as suspicious.

An old, but compact, encryption involves XORing each byte in a virus with a constant, so that the exclusive-or operation had only to be repeated for decryption. It is suspicious code that modifies itself, so the code to do the encryption/decryption may be part of the signature in many virus definitions.

Anti-virus software and other preventive measures

Many users install anti-virus software that can detect and eliminate known viruses after the computer downloads or runs the executable. There are two common methods that an anti-virus software application uses to detect viruses. The first, and by far the most common method of virus detection is using a list of virus signature definitions. This works by examining the content of the computer's memory (its RAM, and boot sectors) and the files stored on fixed or removable drives (hard drives, floppy drives), and comparing those files against a database of known virus "signatures". The disadvantage of this detection method is that users are only protected from viruses that pre-date their last virus definition update. The second method is to use a heuristic algorithm to find viruses based on common behaviors. This method has the ability to detect viruses that anti-virus security firms have yet to create a signature for.

Some anti-virus programs are able to scan opened files in addition to sent and received e-mails 'on the fly' in a similar manner. This practice is known as "on-access scanning." Anti-virus software does not change the underlying capability of host software to transmit viruses. Users must update their software regularly to patch security holes. Anti-virus software also needs to be regularly updated in order to prevent the latest threats.

One may also minimise the damage done by viruses by making regular backups of data (and the operating systems) on different media, that are either kept unconnected to the system (most of the time), read-only or not accessible for other reasons, such as using different file systems. This way, if data is lost through a virus, one can start again using the backup (which should preferably be recent).

If a backup session on optical media like CD and DVD is closed, it becomes read-only and can no longer be affected by a virus (so long as a virus or infected file was not copied onto the CD/DVD). Likewise, an operating system on a bootable CD can be used to start the computer if the installed operating systems become unusable. Backups on removable media must be carefully inspected before restoration. The Gammima virus, for example, propagates via removable flash drives.

Recovery methods

Once a computer has been compromised by a virus, it is usually unsafe to continue using the same computer without completely reinstalling the operating system. However, there are a number of recovery options that exist after a computer has a virus. These actions depend on severity of the type of virus.

Virus removal

One possibility on Windows Me, Windows XP and Windows Vista is a tool known as System Restore, which restores the registry and critical system files to a previous checkpoint. Often a virus will cause a system to hang, and a subsequent hard reboot will render a system restore point from the same day corrupt. Restore points from previous days should work provided the virus is not designed to corrupt the restore files or also exists in previous restore points. Some viruses, however, disable system restore and other important tools such as Task Manager and Command Prompt. An example of a virus that does this is CiaDoor.

Administrators have the option to disable such tools from limited users for various reasons (for example, to reduce potential damage from and the spread of viruses). The virus modifies the registry to do the same, except, when the Administrator is controlling the computer, it blocks all users from accessing the tools. When an infected tool activates it gives the message "Task Manager has been disabled by your administrator.", even if the user trying to open the program is the administrator.

Users running a Microsoft operating system can access Microsoft's website to run a free scan, provided they have their 20-digit registration number.

Operating system reinstallation

Reinstalling the operating system is another approach to virus removal. It involves simply reformatting the OS partition and installing the OS from its original media, or imaging the partition with a clean backup image (Taken with Ghost or Acronis for example).

This method has the benefits of being simple to do, being faster than running multiple antivirus scans, and is guaranteed to remove any malware. Downsides include having to reinstall all other software, reconfiguring, restoring user preferences. User data can be backed up by booting off of a Live CD or putting the hard drive into another computer and booting from the other computer's operating system (though care must be taken not to transfer the virus to the new computer).

Previous Post's: Michael Joseph Jackson's 51st Birthday

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Friday, August 28, 2009

Michael Joseph Jackson's 51st Birthday (29th August, 2009).

Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009), known as the "King of Pop", was an American musician and one of the most commercially successful entertainers of all time. His unique contributions to music and dance, along with a highly publicized personal life, made him a prominent figure in popular culture for four decades.



He started a solo career in 1971, having made his debut in 1964 as a member of The Jackson 5. His 1982 album Thriller remains the best-selling album of all time, with four others Off the Wall (1979), Bad (1987), Dangerous (1991), and HIStory (1995) among the best selling. He popularized several intricate dance moves, such as the robot and the moonwalk. He is widely credited with having transformed the music video from a promotional tool into an art form, with videos for his songs "Billie Jean", "Beat It" and "Thriller" making him the first African American artist to amass a strong crossover following on MTV, and has influenced scores of music artists.

Twice inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, his other achievements feature multiple Guinness World Records including the "Most Successful Entertainer of All Time" 13 Grammy Awards, 17 number one singles (including the four as a member of the Jackson 5), and estimated sales between 350 million and 750 million records worldwide. He was also a notable philanthropist and humanitarian who donated and raised million of dollars through support of 39 charities and his own Heal the World Foundation.

Jackson's personal life generated controversy for years. His changing appearance was noticed from the late 1970s and early 1980s, with changes to the shape of his nose and to the color of his skin drawing media publicity. He was accused in 1993 of child sexual abuse, although no charges were brought. He married twice, first in 1994 and again in 1996, and brought up three children, one born to a surrogate mother. In 2005, he was tried and acquitted of child molestation allegations. While preparing for the This Is It concert tour in 2009, Jackson died at the age of 50 in Los Angeles, California, after suffering from cardiac arrest. His memorial service was broadcast live around the world. Read more . . .

Previous Post's: Genius Play


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Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Genius Play: If you Play 18 seconds, you're Genius!

The Genius Play game is available Here

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Tuesday, August 25, 2009

About Miss Universe Beauty Contest and Miss Universe 2009, Contestents.

Miss Universe is an annual international beauty contest run by the Miss Universe Organization.

The contest was founded in 1952 by California clothing company Pacific Mills. The pageant became part of Kayser-Roth and then Gulf and Western Industries, before being acquired by Donald Trump in 1996.

Along with its rival contests Miss World and Miss Earth this pageant is one of the most publicized beauty contests in the world. The current Miss Universe 2009 is Stefanía Fernández, from Venezuela. She won the title on August 23, 2009.

Competition Formats

In the early years of the pageant, the delegates who made the cut were announced after the preliminary competition. From 1965 to the present day, the semi-finalists were not announced until the night of the main event. The semi-finalists once again competed in evening gown and swimsuit and a top 5 were announced. An interview portion was introduced in 1960 to decide the runners-up and winner.

From 1959 to 1964, there were slight format changes. In 1959 through 1963, there was no cut to 5 finalists; the runners-up and winners were called from the assembled 15 semi-finalists. In 1964, the top 15 became a top 10, and after a round of interview, the winner and runners-up were called from the 10 finalists.

In 1965, the pageant returned to the original format of a cut to 5 finalists, and remained so until 1989.

In 1969, a final question was posed to the last five contestants. The final question was an on-and-off feature of the pageant. In 1990, it had taken root and every pageant since, the final contestants have to answer a final question.

In 1990, the pageant implemented major format changes in the competition itself. Instead of five finalists, the field was reduced from 10 semi-finalists to 6. Each contestant then randomly selected a judge and answered the question posed by the judge. After that, the field was narrowed down further to a final 3. In 1998, the number of finalists was reduced to 5, although there still was a cut to a final 3. This continued to 2001, where the final 5 format was re-instated.

In 2000, the interview portion of the semi-finals was quietly dropped and the contestants once again, as in the early days of the pageant, competed only in swimsuit and gowns.

In 2003, the Top 15 was again selected instead of the Top 10. Cuts were made to make the Top 10, and eventually the Top 5. The final question varied, each coming from the final delegates themselves and the current Miss Universe.

In 2006, twenty semi-finalists were announced, with these delegates competing in the swimsuit competition. The number of competing delegates was then cut to ten, with those delegates competing in the evening gown competition. After that round of competition, the final five were announced, with the finalists competing in the "final question" or interview round. At the end of competition the runners-up were announced and the winner crowned by the outgoing queen.

In 2007 the format changed slightly with the top 15 moving to the swimsuit competition; from there, 10 selected contestants moved on to the evening gown competition where half were eliminated. The final five were competing in the "final question". At the end of competition the runners-up were announced an the winner crowned by the outgoing queen.

Contest Today

The Miss Universe Organization, a New York-based partnership between NBC and Donald Trump, has run the contest since June 20, 2002. The current president is Paula Shugart. The Organization sells television rights to the pageant in other countries, and also produces the Miss USA and Miss Teen USA contests with the winner of Miss USA representing the USA in Miss Universe.

Candidate Selection

Each year, bids are received by the Miss Universe organizers from organizations who wish to select the Miss Universe contestant for a country. This allows competition between different pageants to hold a country's license, as happened for Miss Italy and Miss France for example, when the licenses for their respective traditional organizations were revoked (the usual Miss France competition returned in 2004).

Usually a country's candidate selection involves pageants in major cities, with the winners competing in a national pageant, but this does not always occur. For example, in 2000 Australia's national pageant was abolished as a relic of a bygone era, with Australian delegates instead chosen by a modeling agency. Such "castings" are generally discouraged by the Miss Universe Organization, which prefers national pageants that preserve an aura of respectability and competition. Despite being "cast", Miss Australia, Jennifer Hawkins, was chosen as Miss Universe 2004. Later that year, Australia resumed its national pageant and chose Michelle Guy as Miss Universe Australia 2005. Some of the most successful national pageants in the last decade have been Venezuela, USA, Puerto Rico, etc which command consistently high interest and television ratings in their respective countries. Recent arrivals in the pageant include China (2002), Albania (2002), Vietnam (2004), Georgia (2004), Ethiopia (2004), Latvia (2005), Kazakhstan (2006), Tanzania (2007) and Kosovo (2008); there have also been efforts to revive strong national pageants in South Africa, Canada, Spain, Japan, Colombia; Latin America among other regions. Prior powerhouses are Finland, Germany and Sweden. England is the most successfull non-winning country with nine Top 5 positions.

There are continually efforts to expand the pageant, but the participation of some countries such as Algeria has proven difficult due to cultural barriers to the swimsuit competition, while others such as Mozambique, Armenia and Nepal have balked at sending representatives due to the cost (in fact, of all the major international pageants, the franchise fee for Miss Universe is the most expensive). As of 2007, only four countries have been present at every Miss Universe since its inception in 1952: Canada, France, Germany, and the United States. Many European countries allow 17-year-old contestants to compete in their pageants, while Miss Universe's minimum age is 18, so national titleholders often have to be replaced by their runners-up. Miss Universe also prohibits transsexual applicants and age fabrication.

Final Judgment

The competition for the Miss Universe title has seen many changes, although there have been several constants throughout its history. All the contestants compete in a preliminary round of judging (nowadays called the "Presentation Show") where the field is narrowed to a select number of semi-finalists. This number has fluctuated over the years. The very first Miss Universe pageant had ten semi-finalists. The next two years, the number of semi-finalists grew to 16. In 1955, the number dropped to a stable 15, which remained through 1970. In 1971, the number was reduced to 12. That number was further reduced to a mere 10 in 1984. This lasted until 2001, when the number of 15 was re-instated. In 2006, there were 20 semi-finalists, the highest number ever. In 2007, the Organization announced the Top 15 system will be back, which is also used in 2008.

In the early years, the contestants were judged in swimsuit and evening gown only. In later years, the contestants also competed in a preliminary interview round in a one-on-one meeting with each individual judge.

In 2007, 77 contestants started the competition; the top 15 moving to the swimsuit competition. From there, 10 were selected for the evening gown competition which halved the contenders to 5. These final five then answered a final question to decide the winner.

Previous Title Holders


Miss Universe 2009
, the 58th Miss Universe pageant was held at the Atlantis Paradise Island, in Nassau, Bahamas on August 23, 2009. It made history when an outgoing queen crowned her successor from the same country, Stefanía Fernández, Miss Venezuela, was crowned Miss Universe 2009 by outgoing titleholder Dayana Mendoza of Venezuela. 83 countries and territories competed for the title and the pageant was broadcasted live on NBC and Telemundo.


The presentation show, rehearsals, dress rehearsal and the grand final took place at the Imperial Ballroom, in the Atlantis Paradise Island Resort.

Contestents

Miss Universe 2009
Venezuela - Stefania Fernandaz

1st Runner-up
Dominican Republic - Ada de la Cruz

2nd Runner-up
Kosovo - Marigona Dragusha

3rd Runner-up
Australia - Rachael Finch

4th Runner-up
Puerto Rico - Mayra Matos

Top 10
France - Chloé Mortaud
South Africa - Tatum Keshwar
Czech Republic - Iveta Lutovská
Switzerland - Whitney Toyloy
USA - Kristen Dalton

Top 15
Albania - Hasna Xhukiçi
Belgium - Zeynep Sever
Sweden - Renate Cerljen
Croatia - Sarah Ćosić
Iceland - Ingibjörg Egilsdóttir

Previous Post's: BIG Cinemas

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Galileo Galilei and his Inventions

Galileo Galilei is known as the father of science. He was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and a philosopher too. He is first who creates an telescope. More than at this moment we are celebrating 400 anniversary of his telescope.

Flash back to Life

Galileo was born in Pisa (now in Italy),on February 15, 1564 as the first one of six children of Vincenzo Galilee.Earlier days of his child hood, Galileo made many scientific toys and played with it.He was very much interested in arts and music.
He had an ambition to become an monk,unfortunately he can't be it.then he studied medical,as the wish of his father ,but unlucky follows him here too.After wards he became good professor at pisa University without a degree.

Observations

According to Aristotelian principles the Moon was above the sub-lunary sphere and in the heavens, hence should be perfect. He found the "surface of the moon to be not smooth, even and perfectly spherical,...,but on the contrary, to be uneven, rough, and crowded with depressions and bulges. And it is like the face of the earth itself, which is marked here and there with chains of mountains and depths of valleys." He calculated the heights of the mountains by measuring the lengths of their shadows and applying geometry.


Moons of Jupiter

Observations of the planet Jupiter over successive night revealed four star-like objects in a line with it. The objects moved from night to night, sometimes disappearing behind or in front of the planet. Galileo correctly inferred that these objects were moons of Jupiter and orbited it just as our Moon orbits Earth. For the first time, objects had been observed orbiting another planet, thus weakening the hold of the Ptolemaic model. Today these four moons are known as the Galilean satellites; Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

The Phases of Venus

Venus was observed to go through a sequence of phases similar to the Moon. This could not be explained in the Ptolemaic model but could be accounted for by either the Sun-centered Copernican model or the Earth-centered Tychonic model that had the other planets orbiting the Sun as it orbited the Earth. Galileo rejected Tycho's model as an unnecessary hybrid and used the discovery to consolidate his support of the Copernican model.

Telescope

Galileo's telescope is today remembered as a revolutionary stargazing tool that changed Earth's standing in the heavens. We are in the age of the space telescopes and beyond. However it all started 400 years back with the famous Mr Galileo's telescope. Galileo Galilei demonstrated his telescope, which lead him to make new astronomical observations.

Galileo Galilei did not invent the telescope but was the first to use it systematically to observe celestial objects and record his discoveries.That honor must be assigned to Johannes Lippershey, an obscure optician of Middleburg, who, on the 2nd of October 2608, petitioned the states-general of the Low Countries for exclusive rights in the manufacture of an instrument for increasing the apparent size of remote objects, Here paying tribute to Galileo and his telescope which sparked off the revolution in astronomy or space research.

Thermometer

The substitution, in 1670, of mercury for water completed the modern thermometer. Galileo seems, at an early period of his life, to have adopted the Copernican theory of the solar system, and was deterred from avowing his opinions - as is proved by his letter to Kepler of August 4, 1597, by the fear of ridicule rather than of persecution. The appearance, in September 1604, of a new star in the constellation Serpentarius afforded him indeed an opportunity, of which he eagerly availed himself, for making an onslaught upon the Aristotelian axiom of the incorruptibility of the heavens; but he continued to conform his public teachings in the main to Ptolemaic principles, until the discovery of a novel and potent implement of research in the shape of the telescope (q.v.) placed at his command startling and hitherto unsuspected evidence as to the constitution and mutual relations of the heavenly bodies.

Activity

1586-Invented the Hydrostatic Balance for weighing items in the air & in water.
1593- Invented the Thermometer, a device used to measure air temperature.
1597- Invented a Compass to help solve math problems.
1609- Created a Telescope & uses it to observe the moon's surface.
1610- Uses a telescope to observe Jupiter, Saturn, the Milky Way, Venus, & other celestial bodies
Discovered Pendulum Theory.
Proved that sun is the centre of Solar system.
He wrote a great scientific book called "The story of messenger"

Previous Post's: Miss Universe 2009

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Friday, August 21, 2009

BIG Cinemas (previously AdLabs), Metro BIG Cinema (previously metro Adlabs) and Triveni BIG Cinemas Anantapur.

BIG Cinemas is currently the largest cinema chain in India. It was previously known as Adlabs Cinemas. Adlabs was founded in 1978 by Manmohan Shetty as a film processing unit.

In 2001, Adlabs entered the multiplex business by launching India's first IMAX theatre in Wadala, Mumbai. The company expanded by converting single-screen cinema halls into multiplexes like the famous Metro Adlabs in Mumbai. In 2005, Adlabs was acquired by ADAG (A Group Owned by Anil Ambani). In 2007, Adlabs acquired all the properties of Rave Cinemas, a cinema chain based in Kanpur.

The company recently acquired majority interest in Malaysia-based Lotus Five Star Cinemas, and will be operating a 51 screen cinema chain in Malaysia. The international network, in addition to Malaysia, also includes 220 screens covering the East, Mid West and West Coast of USA as also Mauritius and Nepal. Currently, Adlabs operates 70 properties and 181 screens in more than 40 cities across India. Adlabs commands a significant presence in Mumbai and Maharashtra.

The chain recently signed a deal with Phoenix Mills for the country’s largest multiplex cinema at the upcoming Phoenix Market City in Bandra-Kurla Complex in Mumbai. The 140,000 sq ft (13,000 m2). multiplex will have 15 screens and over 4000 plus seats. Recently, the cinema chain was re-branded as BIG Cinemas.

Metro BIG Cinema (earlier Metro Adlabs (2006–2008), previously Metro Cinema (1938–2006)) is a famous cinema in Bombay, India. In 1938 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) acquired the land and built the cinema. The main architect of the cinema was Thomas W. Lamb of New York, and D. W. Ditchburn (Senior partner of the architectural firm Ditchburn Mistry and Bhedwar) of Bombay was the associate architect. It is located in the Dhobitalao area.

Triveni BIG Cinemas Anantapur, (launched on 21st August, 2009) now open at Anantapur Andhra Pradesh. The BIG Cinemas acquired the Triveni Cine Complex (in anantapur) and re-modeled it as "city class" multi-plex. Finally named it as Triveni BIG Cinemas (3 screens Available). Triveni BIG Cinemas is the Anantapur's 1st City class multi-plex.





BIG Cinemas Official Website: http://www.bigcinemas.com

Previous Post's: William Shakespear


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About William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His surviving works, including some collaborations, consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.

Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. In 1623, two of his former theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's.

Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the nineteenth century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians hero-worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called "bardolatry". In the twentieth century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are constantly studied, performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.

William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, a successful glover and alderman originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent landowning farmer. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised on 26 April 1564. His actual birthdate is unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April, St George's Day. This date, which can be traced back to an eighteenth-century scholar's mistake, has proved appealing because Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616. He was the third child of eight and the eldest surviving son.

Although no attendance records for the period survive, most biographers agree that Shakespeare was educated at the King's New School in Stratford, a free school chartered in 1553, about a quarter of a mile from his home. Grammar schools varied in quality during the Elizabethan era, but the curriculum was dictated by law throughout England, and the school would have provided an intensive education in Latin grammar and the classics.

At the age of 18, Shakespeare married the 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. The consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage licence on 27 November 1582. Two of Hathaway's neighbours posted bonds the next day as surety that there were no impediments to the marriage. The couple may have arranged the ceremony in some haste, since the Worcester chancellor allowed the marriage banns to be read once instead of the usual three times. Anne's pregnancy could have been the reason for this. Six months after the marriage, she gave birth to a daughter, Susanna, who was baptised on 26 May 1583. Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later and were baptised on 2 February 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried on 11 August 1596.

After the birth of the twins, there are few historical traces of Shakespeare until he is mentioned as part of the London theatre scene in 1592. Because of this gap, scholars refer to the years between 1585 and 1592 as Shakespeare's "lost years". Biographers attempting to account for this period have reported many apocryphal stories. Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare’s first biographer, recounted a Stratford legend that Shakespeare fled the town for London to escape prosecution for deer poaching. Another eighteenth-century story has Shakespeare starting his theatrical career minding the horses of theatre patrons in London. John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare had been a country schoolmaster. Some twentieth-century scholars have suggested that Shakespeare may have been employed as a schoolmaster by Alexander Hoghton of Lancashire, a Catholic landowner who named a certain "William Shakeshafte" in his will. No evidence substantiates such stories other than hearsay collected after his death.

It is not known exactly when Shakespeare began writing, but contemporary allusions and records of performances show that several of his plays were on the London stage by 1592. He was well enough known in London by then to be attacked in print by the playwright Robert Greene:

there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a Player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.

Scholars differ on the exact meaning of these words, but most agree that Greene is accusing Shakespeare of reaching above his rank in trying to match university-educated writers, such as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe and Greene himself. The italicised phrase parodying the line "Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide" from Shakespeare’s Henry VI, part 3, along with the pun "Shake-scene", identifies Shakespeare as Greene’s target.

Greene’s attack is the first recorded mention of Shakespeare’s career in the theatre. Biographers suggest that his career may have begun any time from the mid-1580s to just before Greene’s remarks. From 1594, Shakespeare's plays were performed only by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, a company owned by a group of players, including Shakespeare, that soon became the leading playing company in London. After the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, the company was awarded a royal patent by the new king, James I, and changed its name to the King's Men.

In 1599, a partnership of company members built their own theatre on the south bank of the Thames, which they called the Globe. In 1608, the partnership also took over the Blackfriars indoor theatre. Records of Shakespeare's property purchases and investments indicate that the company made him a wealthy man. In 1597, he bought the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place, and in 1605, he invested in a share of the parish tithes in Stratford.

Some of Shakespeare's plays were published in quarto editions from 1594. By 1598, his name had become a selling point and began to appear on the title pages. Shakespeare continued to act in his own and other plays after his success as a playwright. The 1616 edition of Ben Jonson's Works names him on the cast lists for Every Man in His Humour (1598) and Sejanus, His Fall (1603). The absence of his name from the 1605 cast list for Jonson’s Volpone is taken by some scholars as a sign that his acting career was nearing its end. The First Folio of 1623, however, lists Shakespeare as one of "the Principal Actors in all these Plays", some of which were first staged after Volpone, although we cannot know for certain what roles he played. In 1610, John Davies of Hereford wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles.[40] In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition that Shakespeare played the ghost of Hamlet's father. Later traditions maintain that he also played Adam in As You Like It and the Chorus in Henry V, though scholars doubt the sources of the information.

Shakespeare divided his time between London and Stratford during his career. In 1596, the year before he bought New Place as his family home in Stratford, Shakespeare was living in the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, north of the River Thames. He moved across the river to Southwark by 1599, the year his company constructed the Globe Theatre there. By 1604, he had moved north of the river again, to an area north of St Paul's Cathedral with many fine houses. There he rented rooms from a French Huguenot called Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of ladies' wigs and other headgear.

Later years and death

Rowe was the first biographer to pass down the tradition that Shakespeare retired to Stratford some years before his death; but retirement from all work was uncommon at that time, and Shakespeare continued to visit London. In 1612 he was called as a witness in a court case concerning the marriage settlement of Mountjoy's daughter, Mary. In March 1613 he bought a gatehouse in the former Blackfriars priory; and from November 1614 he was in London for several weeks with his son-in-law, John Hall.

After 1606–1607, Shakespeare wrote fewer plays, and none are attributed to him after 1613. His last three plays were collaborations, probably with John Fletcher, who succeeded him as the house playwright for the King’s Men.

Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616 and was survived by his wife and two daughters. Susanna had married a physician, John Hall, in 1607, and Judith had married Thomas Quiney, a vintner, two months before Shakespeare’s death.

In his will, Shakespeare left the bulk of his large estate to his elder daughter Susanna. The terms instructed that she pass it down intact to "the first son of her body". The Quineys had three children, all of whom died without marrying. The Halls had one child, Elizabeth, who married twice but died without children in 1670, ending Shakespeare’s direct line. Shakespeare's will scarcely mentions his wife, Anne, who was probably entitled to one third of his estate automatically. He did make a point, however, of leaving her "my second best bed", a bequest that has led to much speculation. Some scholars see the bequest as an insult to Anne, whereas others believe that the second-best bed would have been the matrimonial bed and therefore rich in significance.

Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church two days after his death. The stone slab covering his grave is inscribed with a curse against moving his bones:
Shakespeare's grave.

Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare,
To digg the dvst encloased heare.
Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones,
And cvrst be he yt moves my bones.

Sometime before 1623, a monument was erected in his memory on the north wall, with a half-effigy of him in the act of writing. Its plaque compares him to Nestor, Socrates, and Virgil. In 1623, in conjunction with the publication of the First Folio, the Droeshout engraving was published.

Previous Post's: History of Australia


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Monday, August 17, 2009

History of Australia, Military History & Gold Rush

History of Australia began when Portuguese explorers first sighted the landmass in the 16th century. The interpretation of the history of Australia is currently a matter of contention, particularly regarding the British settlement and the early treatment of Indigenous Australians.

The consensus among scholars for the arrival of humans of Australia is placed at 40,000 to 50,000 years ago, but possibly as early as 70,000 years ago. The earliest human remains found to date are that of Mungo Man which have been dated at about 40,000 years old. At the time of first European contact, it has been estimated the absolute minimum pre-1788 population was 315,000, while recent archaeological finds suggest that a population of 750,000 could have been sustained The population was split into 250 individual nations, many of which were in alliance with one another, and within each nation there existed several clans, from as few as five or six to as many as 30 or 40. Each nation had its own language and a few had multiple, thus over 250 languages existed, around 200 of which are now extinct.

The mode of life and material cultures varied greatly from nation to nation. The greatest population density was to be found in the southern and eastern regions of the continent, the River Murray valley in particular. Indigenous Australians lived and utilised resources on the continent sustainably, agreeing to cease hunting and gathering at particular times to give populations and resources the chance to replenish. Indigenous Australians were amongst the oldest, most sustainable and most isolated cultures on Earth prior to European settlement beginning in 1788.

For centuries, Makassar had traded with Indigenous Australians on Australia's north coast, particularly the Yolngu of north-east Arnhem Land.

An early map of the known world, made in 1603 by Father Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit who spent a long time in China, noted in a block space where Australia lies: No one has ever been to this land in the south, hence we know nothing about it. In smaller characters he brushed the Chinese characters Fire Land and Land of Parrots suggesting the Chinese were aware of and had perhaps sighted Australia. The reference to parrots may mean that someone had in fact made a landing on the continent after all, or had heard about Australia via word of mouth. However, the reference to Fire Land may suggest the frequent volcanic activity of the Indonesian archipelago, and Land of Parrots may refer to the Parrot species throughout the islands to Australia's north.

British settlement and colonisation

The British Crown Colony of New South Wales started with the establishment of a settlement at Sydney Cove by Captain Arthur Phillip on 26 January 1788. This date later became Australia's national day, Australia Day. These land masses included the current islands of New Zealand, which was administered as part of New South Wales. Van Diemen's Land, now known as Tasmania, was settled in 1803.

Other British settlements followed, at various points around the continent, most of them unsuccessful. In 1824, a penal colony was established near the mouth of the Brisbane River (the basis of the later colony of Queensland). In 1826, a British military camp was established in Western Australia at King George Sound, to discourage French colonisation. (The camp formed the basis of the later town of Albany.) In 1829, the Swan River Colony and its capital of Perth were founded on the west coast proper and also assumed control of King George Sound. Initially a free colony, Western Australia later accepted British convicts, because of an acute labour shortage.

The British Colonial Office in 1835 issued the Proclamation of Governor Bourke, implementing the legal doctrine of terra nullius upon which British settlement was based, reinforcing the notion that the land belonged to no one prior to the British Crown taking possession of it and quashing earlier treaties with Aboriginal peoples, such as that signed by John Batman. Its publication meant that from then, all people found occupying land without the authority of the government would be considered illegal trespassers.

Separate colonies were created from parts of New South Wales: South Australia in 1836, New Zealand in 1840, Victoria in 1851, and Queensland in 1859. The Northern Territory was founded in 1863 as part of South Australia. The transportation of convicts to Australia was phased out between 1840 and 1868.

Massive areas of land were cleared for agriculture and various other purposes, in addition to the obvious impacts this early clearing of land had on the ecology of particular regions, it severely affected indigenous Australians, by reducing the resources they relied on for food, shelter and other essentials. This progressively forced them into smaller areas and reduced their numbers as the majority died of newly-introduced diseases and lack of resources. Indigenous resistance against the settlers was widespread, and prolonged fighting between 1788 and the 1930s led to the deaths of at least 20,000 Indigenous people and between 2,000 and 2,500 Europeans. During the mid-late 19th century, many indigenous Australians in south eastern Australia were relocated, often forcibly, to reserves and missions. The nature of many of these institutions enabled disease to spread quickly and many were closed as their populations fell.

Colonial self-government and the discovery of gold

A Gold rush began in Australia in the early 1850s, and the Eureka Stockade rebellion in Ballarat in 1854 was an early expression of nationalist sentiment; the flag that was used to represent it has been seriously considered by some as an alternative to the Australian flag. The gold rushes brought many immigrants from Great Britain, Ireland, continental Europe, North America and China.

New South Wales in 1855 was the first colony to gain responsible government, managing most of its own affairs while remaining part of the British Empire. Victoria, Tasmania, and South Australia followed in 1856; Queensland, from its foundation in 1859; and Western Australia, in 1890. The Colonial Office in London retained control of some matters, notably foreign affairs, defence and international shipping.

The gold led to a period of prosperity, but eventually the economic expansion came to an end, and the 1890s were a period of economic depression.

The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) was formed from New South Wales in 1911 to provide a location for the proposed new federal capital of Canberra (Melbourne was the capital from 1901 to 1927). The FCT was renamed to the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) in 1938. The Northern Territory was transferred from the control of the South Australian government to the Commonwealth in 1911.

Federation and the World Wars

On 1 January 1901, federation of the colonies was achieved after a decade of planning, consultation and voting, and the Commonwealth of Australia was born. In 1911, His Majesty King George V proclaimed Australia as a Dominion of the British Empire. Australia achieved Independent Sovereign Nation status for the first time in 1919 following the end of WW1. Australia became a foundation member state of the League of Nations on the 28th June 1919 at the time of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in the 'Hall of Mirrors' in the Palace of Versailles in France. The original manuscript and transcript are held in the Swiss Government Archives in Geneva. Australia's independence and sovereign nation status was officially recognised by all world nations when the Charter and Articles of the League of Nations legally became International Law in January 1920. British rule ceased at that point. No ruling British Monarch has held any valid legal power of authority since. Australia also became a foundation member state of the United Nations in 1945.

From 1 February 1927 until 12 June 1931, the Northern Territory was divided up as North Australia and Central Australia at latitude 20°S. New South Wales has had one further territory surrendered, namely Jervis Bay Territory comprising 6,677 hectares, in 1915. The external territories were added: Norfolk Island (1914); Ashmore Island, Cartier Islands (1931); the Australian Antarctic Territory transferred from Britain (1933); Heard Island, McDonald Islands, and Macquarie Island transferred to Australia from Britain (1947).

The Great Depression brought economic hardship to all of Australia. Australia, with its extreme dependence on exports, particularly primary products such as wool and wheat, is thought to have been one of the hardest-hit countries in the Western world, along with Canada and Germany. Unemployment reached a record high of 29% in 1932.

The shock of Britain's defeat in Asia in 1942 and the threat of Japanese invasion caused Australia to turn to the United States as a new ally and protector.

Post-war prosperity

Following World War II, the Australian government instigated a massive program of European immigration. After narrowly preventing a Japanese invasion and suffering attacks on Australian soil for the first time, it was seen that the country must "populate or perish". Immigration brought traditional migrants from the United Kingdom along with, for the first time, large numbers of southern and central Europeans. A booming Australian economy stood in sharp contrast to war-ravaged Europe, and newly-arrived migrants found employment in government assisted programs such as the Snowy Mountains Scheme. Two million immigrants arrived between 1948 and 1975. Robert Menzies' newly-founded Liberal Party of Australia dominated much of the immediate post war era, defeating the Australian Labor Party government of Ben Chifley in 1949. Menzies oversaw the post-war expansion and became the country's longest-serving leader. Manufacturing industry, previously playing a minor part in an economy dominated by primary production, greatly expanded. Since the 1970s and the abolition of the White Australia policy from Asia and other parts of the world, Australia's demography, culture and image of itself has been radically transformed. However, despite the abolition of the policy, instances of racism continue.

The ANZUS defence treaty was signed in 1951 with the United States and New Zealand, and Australia committed troops to the Korean War and the Malayan Emergency. Melbourne hosted the 1956 Summer Olympics and joint British-Australia nuclear tests and rocket launches began near Woomera, South Australia. The population reached 10 million in 1959.

Since 1951, Australia has been a formal military ally of the U.S. under the auspices of the ANZUS treaty. The final constitutional ties between Australia and Britain ended in 1986 with the passing of the Australia Act 1986, ending any British role in the Australian States, and ending judicial appeals to the UK Privy Council. Australia remains a constitutional monarchy with Queen Elizabeth II the Queen of Australia; the 1999 referendum to establish a republic was marginally rejected. Australia's formal links to its British past are increasingly tenuous, although people-to-people and cultural connections between Australia and Britain remain significant. Since the election of the Whitlam Government in 1972, there has been an increasing focus on the nation's future as a part of the so-called "Asia-Pacific" region.

Territories transferred in this period were: Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands. The Coral Sea Islands Territory was established as a Territory of the Commonwealth under the Coral Sea Islands Act 1969. In 1989 when the Australian Capital Territory achieved self government, Jervis Bay became a separate territory administered by the Ministry of Territory.

Indigenous Australians

Indigenous Australians are the first human inhabitants of the Australian continent and its nearby islands.

A wave of massacres and resistance followed the frontier of European settlement. In 1838, twenty-eight Indigenous people were killed at the Myall Creek massacre. The convict settlers responsible for the massacres were hanged. The Kalkadoon of Queensland resisted the settlers, and there was a massacre of over 200 people on their land at Battle Mountain in 1884. There was a massacre at Coniston in the Northern Territory in 1928. Poisoning of food and water had been recorded as early as the 1840s.

The removal of indigenous children, which the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission argue constituted attempted genocide, had a major impact on the Indigenous population. Such interpretations of Aboriginal history are disputed by Keith Windschuttle as being exaggerated or fabricated for political or ideological reasons. This debate is part of what is known within Australia as the History Wars.

Indigenous Australians were given the right to vote in Commonwealth elections in Australia in November 1962, and in Western Australian state elections in the same year. Aboriginals in Queensland were given the vote in state elections in 1965. There were never any racial qualifications to vote in the other four states. The 1967 federal referendum allowed the Commonwealth to make laws with respect to Aboriginal people, and for Aboriginal people to be included when the country does a count to determine electoral representation. The referendum passed with a 90.2% majority, the largest affirmative vote in the history of Australia's referendums.

On 13 February 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd formally apologised to the Aborigines of the stolen generation.

Military

The military history of Australia spans the nation’s 220 year modern history, from the early Australian frontier wars between Aborigines and Europeans to the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although this history is short when compared to that of many other nations, Australia has been involved in numerous conflicts and wars. As a British colony, Australia participated in Britain's small wars of the 19th century, and again in the First World War and Second World War, as well as in the wars in Korea, Malaya, Borneo and Vietnam during the Cold War. In total, during the course of these conflicts nearly 103,000 Australians have died. In the Post Vietnam era Australian forces have been involved in numerous international peacekeeping mission, through the United Nations and other agencies, including in the Persian Gulf, Rwanda, Somalia, East Timor and the Solomon Islands, while more recently they have also fought as part of multi-lateral forces in the Iraq and Afghanistan. During these conflicts, Australian soldiers—known colloquially as Diggers—have often been noted, perhaps paradoxically, for both their fighting and their humanitarian qualities.

For most of the last century military service has been one of the single greatest shared experiences of white Australian males, and although now changing, this continues to influence society to this day. As such war and military service have been defining influences in Australian history, while a major part of the national identity has been built on an idealised conception of the Australian experience of war and soldiering. The myth of Anzac involves two enduring aspects of Australian strategic culture: bandwagoning with a powerful ally, and expeditionary warfare. A parallel trend, however, has been strategic complacency and for this reason Australia has often found itself unprepared for major military challenges. Indeed Australian defence policy was closely linked to Britain until the Japanese crisis of 1942, however since then the alliance with the United States has underwritten its security. These strategic behaviours are enduring themes and reflect the circumstances of a middle power geographically removed from the centres of world power. During threats to the core Australia has often found itself on the periphery and perhaps as a result, it has frequently become involved in foreign wars.

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