The 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ is about to enter its decisive phase with the start of the Round of 16 on Saturday.
Kicking off the knockout rounds are Uruguay and Korea Republic in the first of the day’s two ties. Back in the world elite after a 20-year absence and led by the inspired Diego Forlan, La Celeste were in flawless form in Group A. Collecting two wins and a draw, and scoring four goals and conceding none, they did much to alter their image as a solely combative, battling unit. The South Koreans meanwhile have played some lively, refreshing football and pose a significant threat to the in-form South Americans.
The evening game pits USA, Group C winners ahead of a much-fancied England side, and Ghana, who edged out Serbia in their pool and gave Germany a stiff examination before going down 1-0. This is the Americans’ fourth appearance in the last 16, a further shot in the arm for an increasingly popular sport Stateside, while the Black Stars are carrying the hopes of an entire continent as they seek to reach the quarter-finals for the first time in their history.
The matches
Uruguay-Korea Republic, Nelson Mandela Bay/Port Elizabeth, 16.00 (local time)
USA-Ghana, Rustenburg, 20.30 (local time) Read more…
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An online company has begun marketing an “Anti Vuvuzela Filter” that promises to silence the sound of the controversial plastic trumpets that have become the trademark of South Africa’s World Cup.
The company’s web site, antivuvuzelafilter.com, sells an MP3 audio file for 2.95 euros (3.60 dollars) that the company says will cancel the vuvuzela noise for TV viewers by producing a sound wave similar to the horn’s that cancels the noise.
“Just download our specially designed vuvuzela noise cancellation MP3 and play it back on your home stereo system, computer, iPod, iPhone, etc.,” the web site says.
“Depending on the circumstances, the resulting soundwave may be so faint as to be inaudible to human ears.”
But Anthony Sullivan, a physicist at South Africa’s Rhodes University, called the idea “a marketing hype and a waste of money.”
“Noise cancelling depends on specific positions. You’re not going to get that cancelling,” he said.
His advice to those who don’t like hearing the vuvuzela?
“Mute the TV.”
Copyright AFP 2008, AFP stories and photos shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium
LOS ANGELES – This may come as a surprise, but I’ve come to praise Tom Cruise, not to bury him.
Before all the couch-jumping and creepy laughter in leaked Scientology videos, before public spats with Matt Lauer and Brooke Shields, Cruise wasn’t just THE A-lister among all Hollywood A-listers, he was also an actor who could really act.
In recent years, his off-screen antics have overshadowed his on-screen talent. “Knight and Day,” coming out this week, should turn that around: Cruise is at his charismatic best here, equally adept with the stunts in the action sequences as he is with the banter with co-star Cameron Diaz.
So it’s a good opportunity to look back at his strongest performances — the ones that made Tom Cruise, Tom Cruise:
• “Magnolia” (1999): Pretty much universally recognized as his best work ever, it earned him the third of his three Oscar nominations, this time for supporting actor. As cocky self-help speaker Frank T. J. Mackey, Cruise electrified Paul Thomas Anderson’s opus about intertwined lives – and falling frogs — over one day in Los Angeles. He was totally commanding in his arrogance on stage, yet also laid himself bare watching the death of his father (Jason Robards) and struggling with the conflicting emotions it stirred.
• “Jerry Maguire” (1996): OK, so maybe the “You complete me” scene is more than a little cheesy in retrospect. Still, his performance as a sports agent trying to rebuild his career and his personal life allowed him to show the full range of highs and lows within him. And that line from Cameron Crowe’s film remains famous largely because he’s the one who says it — just like the movie’s catchphrase, “Show me the money!” (“Jerry Maguire” also earned Cruise one of his two best-actor Oscar nominations.) Read more…
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The terms DTE and DCE are very common in the datacommunications market. DTE is short for Data Terminal Equipment and DCE stands for Data Communications Equipment. But what do they really mean? As the full DTE name indicates this is a piece of device that ends a communication line, whereas the DCE provides a path for communication.
Let’s say we have a computer on which wants to communicate with the Internet through a modem and a dial-up connection. To get to the Internet you tell your modem to dial the number of your provider. After your modems has dialed the number, the modem of the provider will answer your call and your will hear a lot of noise. Then it becomes quiet and you see your login prompt or your dialing program tells you the connection is established.
Now you have a connection with the server from your provider and you can wander the Internet.
In this example you PC is a Data Terminal (DTE). The two modems (yours and that one of your provider) are DCEs, they make the communication between you and your provider possible. But now we have to look at the server of your provider. Is that a DTE or DCE?
The answer is a DTE. It ends the communication line between you and the server. Although it gives you the possibility to surf around the glode. The reason why it is a DTE is that when you want to go from your provides server to another place it uses another interface. So DTE and DCE are interface dependend. It is e.g. possible that for your connection to the server, the server is a DTE, but that that same server is a DCE for the equipment that it is attached to on the rest of the Net.
dte-and-dce-concept-in-cisco-routers
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France striker Nicolas Anelka has been sent home from the World Cup after verbally insulting coach Raymond Domenech during the Mexico game.
The Chelsea star missed training on Saturday after reports of a row with the France coach during their 2-0 loss.
And he later refused to apologise when asked to by French Football Federation president Jean-Pierre Escalettes.
An FFF statement said the 31-year-old’s half-time comments to Domenech were “totally unacceptable”.
The statement continued: “Faced by the refusal of the player to publicly apologise, he (Escalettes) took the decision in total agreement with the coach and the official members of the delegation present to exclude Nicolas Anelka from the squad.”France captain Patrice Evra also attended the meeting with Anelka at the French training camp in Knysa.
And Evra accused a “traitor” within the French camp of leaking the story to the media.
“The problem of France is not Anelka, but the traitor among us.
“We must eliminate the traitor from the group because he wants to hurt the team,” the Manchester United full-back said.
Anelka, a League and FA Cup double winner with Chelsea this season, has won 71 international caps. Read more…
(China Daily)
China is proud to be the home of ancient football. But it is ashamed of its players’ performance both at home and abroad.
China is visible in South Africa, even though its football team didn’t qualify to play the beautiful game at the highest level.
Yan Shiduo, president of Chinese Football Association, is watching how the world’s best 32 teams, especially our three neighbors, Japan, the ROK and the DPRK, play the game. The DPRK players’ fighting spirit against favorites Brazil is said to have moved Yan to tears.
We’re waiting to see what he will do with the Chinese team after he returns home. Will he cut Chinese footballers’ unreasonably high income? Or will he come up with more effective rules to discipline the players who love betting and enjoy chasing girls more than the ball? Is he capable of cleansing Chinese football of match-fixing and betting?
China is proud to be the home of ancient football. But it is ashamed of its players’ performance both at home and abroad.
Professionalism is what the Chinese football team needs dearly. Hopefully our three neighbors will teach our football players a lesson. Our players need to catch up with their neighbors, who stand tall with their achievements and fairness.
China is also visible in South Africa in vuvuzela, a plastic trumpet, carried by fans to all the stadiums. Most of these instruments, sold at a very low price across South Africa, were made in China.
But what we want to see at the World Cup is our team, not officials or the inexpensive products we make.
David Davis
One of the best ways to sidestep admin problems is to learn from the mistakes of others. David Davis put together this list of missteps and oversights to help minimize Cisco router pitfalls.
As IT pros, we have many stories about end users who did something dumb with their computers. (How many times have you heard the CD-ROM drive as a cup holder story?) However, we tend to keep our Cisco networking mistakes to ourselves, right? I am not too bashful to admit that I have taken down a network before due to a dumb mistake that could have been prevented (but I won’t tell you what it was). To help other network admins avoid costly mistakes, I’ve come up with a list of 10 dumb Cisco router mistakes.
#1: Not having a backup of your Cisco router configuration
While these mistakes aren’t listed in any particular order, I would say that this one is among the most common router mistakes. Picture this: Your Cisco router dies, but you’re getting a replacement overnight, so your boss is ecstatic. However, you, as the Cisco network admin, can’t seem to make the router pass traffic, as you have no backup of the config. Don’t get put in the doghouse over this. It’s easy to make a backup using: Read more…
by David “Davis CCIE, MCSE+I, SCSA”
Takeaway: Access control lists (ACLs) are a fundamental part of working with routers. How much do you know about managing these vital gatekeepers? David Davis lists 10 things every administrator should know about working with Cisco IOS ACLs.
If you work with Cisco routers, you’re more than likely familiar with Cisco IOS access control lists (ACLs). But that doesn’t mean you know all there is to know about these important gatekeepers. Access lists are an integral part of working with routers, and they’re vital to security.Because ACLs are a fundamental part of router administration, I want to address 10 things you should know about working with these lists. If you’re new to working with Cisco routers, this list offers a good foundation to get you started. But even if you’ve worked with Cisco routers for a while, it never hurts to review the basics—you might even learn something new.So, without any further ado, here are 10 things you need to know about Cisco IOS access lists, beginning with the basic definition of an ACL.
What is an access control list?
In the Cisco IOS, an access control list is a record that identifies and manages traffic. After identifying that traffic, an administrator can specify various events that can happen to that traffic.
What’s the most common type of ACL? Read more…
John Lennon’s handwritten lyrics to “A Day in the Life” sold for $1.2 million in New York on Friday, almost doubling the estimated price, Sotheby’s auction house said.
Considered one of the Beatles’ greatest songs and the final track on “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, the lyrics were sold to a private American collector on the telephone after an intense six minute bidding battle, Sotheby’s said.
“The outstanding price achieved for these handwritten lyrics is testament to the iconic status of the Beatles, John Lennon and especially this song,” said David Redden, Sotheby’s Books and Manuscripts Department international chairman.
According to Sotheby’s, the record for Beatles lyrics at auction is $1.25 million paid for “All You Need Is Love” in 2005.
Sotheby’s described “A Day in the Life” as “the revolutionary song that marked the Beatles’ transformation from pop icons to artists.”
The single sheet of paper features a rough draft of the lyrics, including crossings out and a spelling error where “film” is written as “flim”.
On the reverse side is a neater version written in capital letters and with fewer corrections.
Apparently added later is the line: “I love to turn you on”, for which the song was banned by the BBC when it first came out in 1967 because the words were deemed to be a reference to taking drugs.
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band topped the U.S. and British charts, won four Grammy awards in 1968 and is ranked number 26 in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
The lyrics once belonged to Mal Evans, the Beatles’ road manager.
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DURBAN – Wesley Sneijder scored the only goal Saturday to help the Netherlands beat Japan 1-0 for its second straight World Cup win.
Sneijder’s 53rd-minute strike finally broke down Japan’s stubborn resistance, which had stifled Dutch creativity for much of the match.
Robin van Persie laid the ball back and Sneijder sent a powerful right-foot shot that Japan goalkeeper Eiji Kawashima could only deflect into his net.
It was the Inter Milan playmaker’s 15th goal in 63 internationals.
The Netherlands, however, again failed to live up to its billing as one of the most fluent attacking teams of the tournament. The team struggled to a 2-0 victory over Denmark in its first Group E match, while Japan had a 1-0 victory over Cameroon.
Before Sneijder’s goal, Van Persie missed chances for the Dutch in front of 62,010 fans at Moses Mabhida Stadium.
Japan responded to the goal by pushing forward and Yoshito Okubo had two shots in quick succession, the first saved by Netherlands goalkeeper Maarten Stekelenburg and the second went over the bar.
Substitute Ibrahim Afellay came close to doubling the Dutch lead in the 84th and again in the 88th when he bore down on the Japan goal, but he was foiled both times by good saves from Kawashima diving at his feet.
Japan nearly made the Netherlands pay for those misses when substitute Shinji Okazaki latched onto a deep cross at the far post and shot just over the bar.
The Netherlands reached the World Cup final in 1974 and 1978, but lost both times. Japan’s best finish was reaching the round of 16 when it co-hosted the tournament with South Korea in 2002.
The win set a record of 10 straight victories for the Netherlands in World Cup qualifiers and final tournament matches, including eight before the two in South Africa.
It also extended the Dutch record of never losing to an Asian team. It has now won eight matches and drawn one against Asian opponents.
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