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.