Things that've disappeared the past decade

VIDEO tapes, fax machines and the Encyclopaedia Britannica are among the items to have disappeared from our lives over the past decade.

VIDEO tapes, fax machines and the Encyclopaedia Britannica are among the items to have disappeared from our lives over the past decade.

No corner of our lives has been left untouched by the internet as households across Australia went online.

Since 1998, home internet access has more than quadrupled from 16 per cent to 72 per cent, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Renowned reference books such as Encyclopaedia Britannica and World Book seemed to disappear as they were usurped first by Microsoft Encarta and then the far less reliable Wikipedia. Video tapes became a relic in the 2000s, with DVD players outselling video recorders early in the decade. The massive retail video libraries of the past also moved on, selling their old wares for $1 a tape and then filling the shelves with fast-moving DVDs.

Fax machines were made obsolete by scanners and email, and by this year your Filofax fitted in your mobile phone. Many CD collections were condensed on to a tiny MP3 player.

Film cameras have all but disappeared, as did the trip to the chemist to get film developed.

Your camcorder also went digital, and eventually merged into your camera or telephone or both.

Public telephones slowly disappeared as even children are now able to whip out their mobiles.

Nowadays, 31 per cent -- or 841,000 -- of all children aged between five and 14 have access to their own mobile phones, the ABS estimates.

The Yellow Pages has become a thing of the past for many.

And the way we use computers also changed. Floppy disks, which were a mere 3.5 inches (9cm) wide in 2000, were usurped by zip drives, CDs and finally the USB flash drive.

The squeals and delays of dial-up internet are also on the way out, as households move to high-speed broadband connections.

The steady stream of catalogues stuffed in mailboxes slowed to a trickle in the 2000s, and the floodgates of spam email opened. Suddenly, it seemed, everyone knew an exiled Nigerian prince.

Australia began generating spam too. By 2004, Australia was the world's 10th-largest spam producer, accounting for 1.21 per cent of global unsolicited commercial emails.

Finding your way was revolutionised by the explosion in GPS navigation. Driving while balancing an open street directory on your lap was made a thing of the past this decade.

Best and worst fashion of the decade!

(with thanks to Nedahl Stelio, a contributor to The Punch www.thepunch.com.au)

Yes, there have been some corkers in the fashion world this past ten years – thigh high rubber boots usually worn to wade in alligator-infested swamps anyone? – but there have also been some winners. Pieces that women have been thankful to add on high rotation in their wardrobe. Here’s a round up of the best and worst trends of the decade.

Bad Sarah Jessica, Good Sarah Jessica

WORST

The 80’s revival
Those who are old enough to have gone through it once are also old enough to remember how horrifically unfashionable the 80’s were. All you have to do is look at Sarah-Jessica Parker then, and Sarah-Jessica Parker now to know that the 80’s should not be revisted.

Yet here we are, in shoulder pad HELL. Not to mention acid wash jeans, the midriff top, taffeta prom dresses, fluro accessories, jelly shoes, balloon skirts, fingerless gloves, and the piece de resistance – the scrunchie - is attempting a comeback.

Disposable fashion
Two shirts for $10, three bags for $50, four skirts for $100. This decade, women have never had more crap quality clothing to spend their money on – and it’s not good for our wardrobe or our environment. A drag on the world’s resources which is also filling up our dumpsters, disposable clothing is costing us millions globally every year. The solution is to buy quality items, less often. Just because you’re heading out on Friday night does not mean you need another new top. Really.

High waisted jeans
Honestly, whose five-second idea was this? High-waisted jeans only looked good on 6” tall supermodels, which is about 0.0001% of the population. To the rest of us: time to trash ‘em.

Harem pants
What genie-loving, mung-bean eating, MC Hammer-listening fashion designer coined this trend? I don’t know, but I’d like to blame them for all of the droopy assed women on the street.

Too-low hipsters
When these first hit the stores we loved them – finally, an alternative to the Levis 501. But the more we wore them, the more we realized something: they had created a fat pocket that hadn’t existed previously. That’s right, I’m talking about The Muffin Top. Any item of clothing that increased fatty deposits on women was instantly going to be scorned and yes, tossed to the bottom of the pile.

Juicy Couture tracksuits
If you didn’t have a Juicy tracksuit (or a cheaper copy of), you simply weren’t cool. Because EVERYONE owned one of these matching velour babies, some of whom were lucky to have the genuine article with JUICY emblazoned across their butt. Jessica Simpson bought personalized pairs for all her bridesmaids. Such a lovely time in fashion.

One piece swimsuits with huge cut outs on the sides and t-bar fronts
Two words: tan lines.

Ridiculous heels shaped like table legs
There are good heels, that are elegant and do the job of shaping the body, giving you height and making you feel like sex on legs … and there are gimmicky heels, on platforms with stilts shaped like an old candlestick that you, along with loads of models on the catwalk, now hate after spraining their ankle while wearing them.

BEST

Ballet flats
Finally! Women could wear flat shoes! Which didn’t cramp our toes! Or make our soles ache! Or put our backs out! And we could still look fashionable! Thank you, Kate Moss, for making these okay.

Opaques
Umm, stockings that suck us in, stop our thighs from jiggling, make us look thinner, tighter, taller and keep us warm in winter. Are they a saviour for women? Hell yes.

Leggings
Who doesn’t want a pant that costs less than your weekly food shop and can be worn under dresses, tops, coats and still look as chic as $300 jeans?

High waisted dresses
After years of belting at the hip we at last rediscovered our waist and ultimately, that feminine hourglass shape which really does suit every woman.

Sequins
It’s every girl’s dream really. Who doesn’t want to wear a million tiny shiny circles sewn onto their top and sparkle like they deserve to, hmm? Sequins came into our lives in a big way this decade, much to the chagrin of men who didn’t quite know how to tackle the trend – are they supposed to wear a tux if you’re wearing sequins? No boys. It’s just us that gets to dress up like this.

Skinny scarves worn in summer
I love a trend that ticks off a number of things: colour on a boring outfit? Yes. Get to wear the same clothes but make it look different? Yes. Cover a sagging jowl, spotty chest or too much cleavage? Yes yes yes!

Statement jewelery
This decade, we learnt that just because we couldn’t afford oversized baubles to adorn our wrists, neck and fingers, didn’t mean we couldn’t wear fabulous costume jewelery that looked just like the real thing – almost better because we
could afford one in every colour.

Blazers
Traditionally a part of a suit, the blazer is now a classic uniform. Worn on it’s own with jeans, skirts an evening dress, it’s every woman’s staple.

Red attack!

Red everywhere.

Wednesday morning I woke 6:30am, my usual hour.

One serious problem.

Everything was red.

Red?

Kid you not. Checked outside and everything was also red. N o other colours.

Red! red! Red!

Do I give up the grog? Was it Armageddon? A terrorist attack? Had I died and gone to hell? Scary moments.

What's a red dust storm? Didn't know or care until yesterday. Now I'm an experienced dust storm survivor, I have fresh dinner conversation ammunition.

This red haze, churned by powerful winds that lifted thousands of tons of topsoil from the arid and drought-stricken inland, was visible from space, appearing as a huge brown smudge in satellite photographs of Australia.

The storm ripped an unknown amount of topsoil from farms across a huge swath of Australia.

This extraordinary event of nature amused our country cousins who smirkingly suggested we city slickers get a life and get over it. They've been there and done that.

Now the dust has settled so to speak, car wash merchants are gleefully rubbing their hands, ordering Rolls Royces and first class trips overseas. Home cleaning services are booked out and lifting hourly rates. The recession is over. Not that we had one in the first place but it makes good copy.

There are winners and losers. Someone has to benefit.

Did you notice?

Wimbledon 2009 is over. Fantastic stuff!

Fedderer/Roddick match final has gotta go down in history as one of the greatest epics in Wimbledon tennis. Both players deserving of accolades. The TV networks rejoice at an epic event equal to MJ memorial coverage

Not a grunter or screamer amongst the finalists except for the Williams sisters. They're entitled to grunt, scream, groan and orgasm 'cause they are the world's best female tennis players. But no more! It pisses us off!

With luck, they'll shut up now they're threatened with their play money taken from them in grunt fines.

Hopefully, we see the Williams grunt-less at the NY fest.

Nothing talks better than hard cash!

RIP Jacko

Michael Jackson.

I wasn't a great fan of the man. Even less so when pedophile allegations came to light. However hundreds of millions thought otherwise and stuck by their man. Rightfully so!

There's no denying, he was a great talent despite his eccentricities. We baby boomers grew up with this guy and had at least one LP of his even though we may deny this. His dance moves and music were incredible and deserving to be remembered in history. He will remembered as a leader in music amongst the likes of other legendary contemporary artists such as Elvis, Buddy Holly. As someone said ..."a Rembrandt of our time".

RIP Michael. We miss you and will not forget you.

Racket buster. The best news since sliced bread

The racket of screaming, grunting tennis players ranks higher on the irritation scale than fingernails scraping on a chalkboard. This awful, deafening and unfair trend that's now common particularly among young women players.

Relief is near as new proposals to make noise hindrance part of the International Tennis Federation's code of conduct, could mean screaming grunters could potentially forfeit a whole game or match.

Actor, Peter Ustinov, a wit and a tennis tragic, watching Monica Seles grunting her way to a victory at Wimbledon said to a friend: ‘I’d hate to be be in the hotel room next door on her wedding night.’

Forget about wedding nights when grunting and groaning are presumably legitimate noise-making. Let’s just accept that watching someone like Seles play in the past, and now one of the loudest offenders, Maria Sharapova, who at 101 decibels is almost as loud as a lion's 110 decibel roar or the sound a small aircraft makes when it takes off.

Monica Seles is not far behind with her groans reaching 93.2 decibels subjecting we viewers to a sound pollution of grunts, groans, aaahs, ooohs, eeeaahhs-urrrrrrs

In last month's French open, Aravane Rezai complained to the umpire about the noise emitting from 16-year-old player Michelle Larcher de Brito.

This tactic is increasingly being adopted by players who, admittedly, put less into their shots and their racing around the courts than the star players. It’s being called ‘the counter-grunt.’ The journeyperson Russian player, Elena Dementrieva, for instance, lived up to her name by adopting a double-bang grunt, ‘oooaah- urrrring’, on every shot, whether a great effort was expended or not.

There are two main reasons why sound pollution on the tennis court should be banned: first, it is used as a tactic to unsettle opponents: and second, it makes watching tennis played by grunters and groaners an unpleasant experience, which grates on the pleasure of watching tennis.

The grunters and groaners deny that they are trying to unsettle opponents. But this is clearly at the heart of the tactic. The retired Wimbledon referee Alan Mills told reporters some years ago that coaches were training women players, in particular, to grunt as loud as they can.

Martina Navratilova, who despised the tactic, pointed out that tennis players rely on the sound of the ball coming off an opponent’s racket to a certain extent to give them clues about its velocity, direction and the spin on the shot. How convenient it is that the grunting denies a skillful player this basic information.

In the 1992 quarter-final at Wimbledon, Steffi Graf demanded that Monica Seles, grunting at a 93 decibel level, shut up. Seles eventually lost the match to Graf.

Then there is the unpleasant nature of the sound. For the two hours or so playing Sharapova, say, her opponent and viewers are subjected to an unceasing flow of unpleasant noise, rather like being forced to listen to a heavy metal radio station in a locked room with the sound distorted because the tuning is off-station.

Leading coaches and players have called for grunting to be banned on the tennis court by the organisers of the major tournaments. The secrets of the bedroom should be kept to the bedroom.

Official gruntometer: Top 10 grunters in decibels
(Stats thanks to the Daily Mail)

# Lion's roar 110
# Maria Sharapova 101
# Monica Seles 93.2
# Serena Williams 88.9
# Lindsay Davenport 88
# Venus Williams 85
# Victoria Azarenka 83.5
# Elena Bovina 81
# Anna Kournikova 78.5
# Kim Clijsters 75

Big brother is watching!

Your data is not private!

In the privacy of our studies, offices, libraries, or wherever it is we have our computers, it may seem that we are alone, with no one looking over our shoulders. But every document we draft, every step through the Internet we take, is creating tracks through the digital environment in our computers. This fact has a number of implications, both useful and detrimental.

What happens when drafting a document?

Suppose we are drafting a Microsoft Word document. It would appear that we are simply typing a single document that we can then save (or not), or delete at will. But several things are going on behind the scenes. As soon as a document is started, even before giving it a name, an invisible document is mirroring what is being typed on the screen. This happens every time the document is opened after it is saved. When printing the document, another invisible file containing all or part the document is created as a buffer for the printer's use. All the while, data from the document is being written into the computer's virtual memory file, a kind of scratch pad the computer uses in order to speed things up. So the very act of writing a document and printing it puts all or part of the document in at least four different places.

What happens when a document is deleted?

When a document is deleted, one letter of the name of the document is changed so that the operating system ignores its presence (it essentially becomes invisible to the user) and allows it to be overwritten. Otherwise, not much really happens to the document right away. Over time, it may get overwritten - or it may not.

What happens when visiting a website?

The browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari) makes a record of the address of the website and the specific page that includes the date and time, it keeps a record of any “cookie" - data that the website gives the browser - this is called “Internet History". The browser also downloads the little images ("thumbnails") that are on the given web page. All of this information sits on the user's computer, and the Internet history gets renewed regularly. Every week or so, the browser makes a whole new copy of the history file, deleting the old one. Of course, like with any other document, the deleted history file doesn't go away - its name is changed and part or all of it may become overwritten in time.

Digital Forensics

A computer forensic expert, using various software tools can look underneath the images in Windows that a user sees. Using a range of computer forensics suites and data recovery tools, the “digital detective" can recover deleted files, and find thousands of otherwise lost snippets of Internet history, missing emails, and apparently erased images. These processes make up a big part of the science and art of digital forensics.

Good news / Bad News

Depending on your perspective, the ability to recover information that one might have thought gone - or never stored - can be helpful or hurtful. On the good news side, such information can help a defendant to prove his or her innocence, or fuel a counter-claim. Conversely, digital discovery can reveal wrongdoings thought hidden or lost.

For the individual, computer forensics can provide the gift of finding data thought long lost. For law enforcement, it can provide the digital evidence needed to prove cases in a wide variety of offenses, from threats to fraud to embezzlement to child or elder exploitation. For business, e-discovery can provide a remedy for stolen secrets or customers. For a defendant, skilful electronic discovery can help to disprove an opponent's claims saving money
, reputation, or even jail time. For lawyers, a whole other avenue of document discovery is opened up.

Digital forensics can be a boon or a bane, but the field is advancing quickly, gaining wider use, and is here to stay.

A comprehensive history of hangovers

After sharing a few green beers with friends on St Pat's day and nursing my hangover, I thought back to the hangovers I've known and loved.

There was my post-Rat-Pack-themed-party hangover, when I spent the day after -- my housewarming! -- attempting not to make any sudden movements while regretting each vodka martini I'd upended.

There was the particularly hairy-tongued post-New Year's party hangover, memorable because on my way home on Military Road, I had a flat tire and I'd had to change it by the curb, my hands moving on autopilot.

Then a few weeks ago, my mate John who has a memorable collection of wines in his cellar (curse his hobby) decided to introduce me to a few specials he had. The rest is history and all I remember is that hangover was one of my greatest achievements.

But probably my favorite hangover was during my first year at Melbourne University. That's where they taught me to drink amongst other interesting things.

Leonid Brezhnev had just died, and my mate, Pat, and I decided to mark his passing by toasting the occasion with Bulgarian wine. Bulgarian wine was not as easy to get then as it is today, but for some reason -- an overestimation of Melbourne's Bulgarian population, perhaps -- but the liquor store near our flat stocked it.

Bulgarian wine tastes pretty much like you would expect it to taste, but after the first three or four glasses you are able to shed your natural reluctance to putting the ghastly stuff near your lips. After two or three bottles you even start to enjoy it, not because it tastes good but because you're proud of yourself for enduring it, the same way I imagine you feel some pride after walking barefoot across hot coals.

We drank through the night and before lecture the next morning went to a cafe for breakfast. We had spent all our cash on Bulgarian wine, however, so only had enough money for a coffee and an order of toast.

A good hangover is like a good movie: entertaining, educational, satisfying. A good hangover should be part of a narrative arc, the final act of a drama that began the night before. Whether it's played for comedy or tragedy, well, that largely depends on the night before.

People might disagree on whether a hangover is immoral, but certainly all hangovers are chemical. No matter what you've been drinking --

Bulgarian wine, Scotch whisky, Guinness -- chemically speaking, it all comes down to ethyl alcohol -- or, as chemists know it, C2H5OH.

"Chemistry is not a strictly academic subject," a commentator said at a seminar I attended yesterday. "It's also something that affects your regular life."

She was wearing green shamrock deelyboppers on her head. She has been giving a St Patrick's Day-themed seminar for eight years.

Humans have been drinking alcohol -- and, presumably, waking up regretting it -- since at least 3700 B.C., she said. (Those were the Egyptians. It's a wonder they got the pyramids built at all.)

Yes, the ethyl alcohol in whatever poison you're drinking can give you a hangover the next day, but you're just as likely to suffer from the byproducts of fermentation, what are called cogeners. (I think Bulgarian wine is about 90 percent cogeners.)

She moved up the ladder of inebriation: .02 blood alcohol level and a drinker typically experiences mild throbbing and a touch of dizziness; at .03 come feelings of euphoria and superiority; at .05, normal inhibitions are almost eliminated.

She said: "Many liberties are taken. I don't need to say more."

She did say a little more: Alcohol can provoke desire, but it typically ruins your ability. "I know you want to say, 'Not me,' but we'd all have to be there to pass judgment on that."

There was nervous laughter from me and my fellow seminar attendees.

On a lighter note ...the next seminar is not for 6 months unless my company decides to "educate" me further.

Perhaps I won't have a hangover.

Twitterisms for all

I'm obsessed with Twitter. Check out my moment by moment Twitter ravings right side of this page.

Massive contributions coming here soon.

Commerce interruptus!